Turkish Airlines Employees in Trouble for Camel Sacrifice

From USA Today:

ANKARA, Turkey (AFP) — Turkish Airlines took swift disciplinary action Wednesday after it emerged that members of its technical staff had sacrificed a camel to celebrate getting their job done.

Maintenance workers all pitched in to buy the beast to mark the long-awaited dispatch to Britain of the last of 11 RJ100 aircraft which Turkish decided to leave out of its fleet due to a series of accidents involving the planes.

The camel was sacrificed Tuesday at Istanbul’s Ataturk airport and about 1,540 pounds of meat was distributed among the staff.

The event surfaced when several newspapers ran the story along with photographs of the camel being led into the airport grounds and of workers holding up bloody pieces of meat after the sacrifice.

Turkish said in a brief statement that it had launched an investigation and temporarily suspended the head of the maintenance department.

Ataturk airport manager Vedat Muftuoglu said he had received an apology from those involved, but underlined that disciplinary action was nonetheless coming their way.

“No one should do such a thing just because an airliner has rid itself of some aircraft,” Muftuoglu was quoted as saying by Anatolia news agency.

In Turkey, it is a widespread practice to sacrifice animals to mark a happy event or the accomplishment of a difficult task.

Oddly enough, we see nothing wrong with sacrificing an animal in a case like this. (Whether an airport is the proper venue is another question.)

Just consider the number of animals “sacrificed” to produce steaks, ham, sausage, fried chicken and bacon in this country.

Although “multiculturalism” in academia is pretty much just a euphemism for politically correct victim studies, there is value in appreciating and tolerating other cultures.

Just don’t blunder into complete moral relativism. Sometimes the way we do things here really is morally superior.