All the things wrong with shipping F-35s to Turkey — Erdogan’s increasing radicalism, his tyrannical grip on the country, his isolating Islamism and confrontational stance with Europe, his adventurism in Syria, his support for Hamas, the growing question mark over Turkey’s reliability as a NATO ally, Turkey’s intent to purchase an air defense system from Russia — all of them: consider all of it said.
The feature here is the really out-there ceremony with which the roll-out of Turkey’s first two F-35 strike-fighters was celebrated a week ago.
U.S. Military Defense described it this way in the verbiage accompanying a separate YouTube video of the F-35:
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Upon receiving its first-ever F-35s from the US, Turkey held a memorable celebration that gave viewers a “taste of Turkey’s rich heritage and diverse culture,” with a long intro song that depicted skydivers, birds, and ended with a man dressed as a bird or plane doing an aviation-themed dance.
They’re not kidding. You’ll be watching to the 5:00 minute mark. You can jump in any time before that, but don’t jump in any later than about 3:45, because you want to be sure to catch the portly fellow wearing the big costume wings. He prances around a bit, and then drops the wings and does some totally sick pirouettes and jumps.
The musical act accompanying this whole performance is seen mostly in silhouette, which adds to the surreal been-there-done-that-but-never-quite-like-this atmosphere.
It doesn’t make sense, but that’s what makes it so awesome.
Of course, back at the Solemn Cafe on Serious Boulevard, we need to energize the Senate to nix any more deliveries of the F-35 to Turkey. It’s incredibly stupid to send F-35s to a country that is also buying the S-400 air defense system from Russia.
H/t: Task & Purpose.
