The sky is the limit?Turkish fighter jets, Turkish astronauts… Turkish avatars coming soon?

The sky is the limit?Turkish fighter jets, Turkish astronauts… Turkish avatars coming soon?It is practically impossible to predict whether any future wave of WikiLeaks cables will reveal Turkish pressure on Hollywood to produce a film portraying the antics of a Turk Superman who does not eat pork or drink alcohol and is disguised as a journalist writing for a government-friendly newspaper. It is similarly impossible to predict whether cables will reveal a Turkish request for match-fixing at the 2010 World Basketball Championship’s final game, a threat to bomb Israel with future “made-in-Turkey” fighter jets, or an invitation to a U.S. ambassador in Turkey to convert to Islam. But surely, the cables are fun!The latest leaks have unveiled that the king of Saudi Arabia wanted the United States president to outfit his personal jet with the same high-tech devices as Air Force One – in return for choosing Boeing’s passenger jets over those of Airbus. The Bangladeshi prime minister reportedly pressed the State Department to re-establish landing rights at John F. Kennedy Airport in New York – also in exchange for choosing Boeing over Airbus.And President Abdullah Gül, according to the cables, wanted the Obama administration to let a Turkish astronaut sit on a NASA space flight – not too difficult to guess…for Boeing planes! After Transport Minister Binali Yıldırım conveyed the request in January 2010, then U.S. ambassador to Ankara James Jeffrey called the effort to link the Boeing deal to political requests an “unwelcome, but unsurprising degree of political influence in this transaction.About a month after Ambassador Jeffrey cabled to Washington that “we probably cannot put a Turkish astronaut in orbit,” Turkish Airlines, or THY, placed an order for 20 Boeing planes – the Airbus chaps must have learned their lesson: in the next competition, they should propose a team of Turkish astronauts in orbit, not just one!In fact, what in the world of defense business could be viewed as a kind of Boeing-Airbus rivalry concerns Turkey – and imminently! In two tenders worth several billions of dollars, U.S. and European rivals are thriving to beat each other and the Turks will choose the victors this year. What will the very important Turks request in these classified deals? Is the sky the limit? A mega-sized mosque in Rome? Frozen diplomatic ties with Israel? The first Turkish nuclear bomb? It’s too hard and boring to guess.Read the full story here.