Turkey closes airspace to Armenian flights over monument

According to Wednesday’s statement by Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu, Turkey has banned flights by Armenian aircraft in retribution for the construction of a monument in the Armenian capital that Ankara claims glorifies those responsible for the murder of Turkish officials.

Cavusoglu issued a warning to Armenia in an interview with NTV television that if the monument in Yerevan is not taken down, Turkey would retaliate.

The decision was made at a time when Turkey and Armenia, which do not have diplomatic ties, were in the middle of negotiations to mend fences and put years of animosity behind them. Special envoys that they appointed have participated in numerous rounds of negotiations. After much deliberation, they decided to start charter flights between Istanbul and Yerevan.

Due to the estimated 1.5 million Armenians who perished in massacres, deportations, and forced marches that started in Ottoman Turkey in 1915, the two countries have had a tense and long-standing relationship.

The episode is viewed as genocide by most historians. Although Turkey acknowledges that many people died during that time, it maintains that the death toll is inflated and that the deaths were caused by civil unrest.

Cavusoglu claimed the monument’s purpose was “to glorify” Armenians who participated in plots to kill Turkish diplomats in the 1970s and 1980s as well as Ottoman and Azerbaijani officials in the 1920s.
We cannot accept this, we can’t. Their goals are definitely bad, as we can see, stated Cavusoglu.

The memorial honors participants in “Operation Nemesis,” the Armenian Revolutionary Federation’s clandestine assassination campaign that took place between 1920 and 1922 and was dubbed a “covert operation” to avenge the slaughter and expulsion of Armenians by Ottoman Empire forces.

At the April 25 unveiling of the monument, which bears the names of 16 members of Operation Nemesis, Yerevan Deputy Mayor Tigran Avinyan stated that Operation Nemesis was “a record of the fact that crimes do not go unpunished throughout history regardless of how the international community treats it.”

According to the central aviation committee of Armenia, the Turkish government did not formally inform it of the closing of the airspace.

In 1993, Turkey closed its border with Armenia in sympathy with its close ally Azerbaijan, which was engaged in conflict with Armenia over the Nagorno-Karabakh territory.

Turkey actively backed Azerbaijan in the six-week confrontation with Armenia over Nagorno-Karabakh in 2020, which resulted in a peace agreement mediated by Russia and saw Azerbaijan retake control of a sizeable portion of the region.

Alen Simonyan, the president of the Armenian parliament, traveled to Ankara on Wednesday to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Black Sea Economic Cooperation. The legislative president is scheduled to meet with the head of the Turkish parliament, according to Simonyan’s press secretary.