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Turkey adds to its critical deficit of military pilots

As Turkey's military pilot shortage worsens, the government is ordering former pilots back into service on short notice.
A Turkish air force patroller flies by as people watch the ceremony celebrating the 99th anniversary of Anzac Day in Canakkale on April 24, 2014. A dawn ceremony on April 25 marks the time of the first landings of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) at the Gallipoli peninsula in the ill-fated Allied campaign to take the Dardanelles Strait from the Ottoman Empire. In the ensuing eight months of fighting, about 11,500 ANZAC troops were killed, fighting alongside British, Indian and French soldie

Even as Turkey is urgently trying to fix its self-inflicted shortage of military pilots, the government dismissed 25 more. It then issued a state of emergency decree to force its former aviators to leave lucrative jobs in the private sector and return to service.

Turkey's air force was the hardest-hit military branch in the mass purges that followed the July 2016 failed coup. I noted in an article a year ago that the air force would need at least two years to make up for the pilot deficiency it was facing.

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