Attrition: Greeks 1, Turks 0
"October 26, 2020:
In August 2020 the Turkish Air Force lost one of their F-16s after two Turkish F-16s flew deep into Greek air space and sought to disrupt a Greek Air Force training exercise. The Turkish pilots were inexperienced and Greek F-16 pilots were quite the opposite and forced the Turkish pilots to engage in some high-speed maneuvers to escape the Greek F-16s. This exhausted most of the fuel in the Turk F-16s. The Greeks took advantage of the fact that they were closer to their base than the Turks. One of the Turkish F-16s ran out of fuel while approaching its base and barely avoided crashing as the aircraft touched down and ended up off the runway in a ditch. The pilot was unharmed but the F-16 was written off as too damaged to repair. It is unclear if the Greek pilots each got half-credit for a confirmed kill.
There were other reasons for the way this embarrassing incident played out. Turkish pilot training standards have plummeted since 2016, largely for political reasons. Meanwhile the Greek fighter pilots continue to be rated as among the best in NATO. The sharp decline in Turkish pilot quality began in early 2016 when the government made it easier for fighter pilots to leave the air force before they term of service was completed. These ex-military pilots wanted to get better paying jobs as commercial pilots. At that time, to become a fighter pilot required a service commitment of over ten years.
The Turkish pilot shortage got a lot worse after the mysterious July 2016 coup attempt. That coup failed, with about 300 dead, 2,000 wounded and several hundred thousand government employees fired. The threatened Turk government was controlled by an Islamic party and used the failed coup as an excuse to drive a rival Islamic party out of government along with many officials and military officers considered too secular."
https://strategypage.com/htmw/htatrit/articles/20201026.aspx
= new reply since forum marked as read
