S.F.L.Y
I am not sure what kind of axe you are attempting to grind, but you seem to be alone in your effort to do it with a blunt object!
From the information currently available, it appears to me that the BA crew responded to an actual loss of thrust in the most appropriate manner by retracting the flap setting to enhance the glide performance, thus bringing the AOA closer to that for "best glide." I suspect that they did not have sufficient height to achieve the ideal AOA for the a/c weight and configuration, but their reaction to a scenario for which they had not been trained certainly improved the glide performance by some degree - and probably by just enough to change the outcome.
The Turkish crew, based on what has been published to date, appear not to have responded in any way to a situation that was unfolding gradually over a period of 100 seconds. The Turkish crew also had thrust at their disposal should they have deemed it necessary to use!