BOAC I suspect there are many current NG pilots like myself who are finding the thread most informative, but do not have the time to contribute as much as some others.
I for one am not very surprised that the aircraft may well have been unrecoverable at the point at which it was attempted. 40 knots below VREF , combined with the back trim and pitch up moment from selecting high thrust and aircraft height make for an extreme situation. As you say it might just be possible, but from the performance of this crew up to that point very unlikely.
I am also not surprised that the Turks are trying to put as positive a spin on things as they can. Although I suspect that you would struggle to find any current 737 pilots who would place the main blame on the aircraft systems and design.
The open atc data is interesting but obviously needs validating. I await with interest a detailed description of the final approach and aircraft configuration. I am curious why the aircraft appears to have made such a shallow intercept of the localiser which led to a glide slope intercept closer in than ideal and from above the glide. The latter point is conspicuously absent in official reports to date so maybe things happened differently.
The aircraft required a considerable rate of descent to get on the glide while configuring and reducing speed at the same time. It is a reasonable assumption that the trainee must have been at a reasonably early stage in his training otherwise he would not have needed a safety FO. If this was the case then given what we now know it would have been prudent for the training captain to have taken control at an earlier stage. He certainly could have expected some foqa (flight operational quality assurance recording/think spy in the cab for those not familiar) busts at the very least.
I raised automation complacency in an earlier post. There was obviously other overconfidence. The crew had an impressive number of hours between them, although it would be interesting to know how many were on the NG. Finally I would add the old saying 'there is no such thing as a stupid question, only stupid answers'.