Phantom jets over Bodrum

Maybe you’ve heard: Turkey and Syria have been squabbling lately. Syria shoots down a Turkish Phantom F4, Syria says it was in their airspace, Turkey sends tanks up to the border, etc., etc.

So we’re at this café on the beach in Bodrum, ordering up some nice cool Efes and some meze dishes, just, you know, kicking back and enjoying a summer day on the water. And BOOM! Out of nowhere comes seven Turkish Air Force Phantom F4s—heading right for our restaurant on the beach.

Dogs howl, babies cry, old ladies faint, and I duck under the table. It’s terrifying. The jets fly so low that I swear I could see the lead pilot’s decal of Ataturk on his helmet. Then they bank hard and fly not more than a hundred feet over the Bodrum castle.

And then they do this again. And again. And again.

For at least half an hour we were bombarded. It was if they were practicing bomb drops on Bodrum harbor. Except without the bombs. Flying low, straight at the beach, the harbor, the castle. Our table shook so much that you had to hold your glass or it would have been knocked over. The dogs couldn’t stand it. I swear I saw several of them go crazy and run off like stampeding cattle, howling madly as they went. Frankly, I felt like doing the same.