ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Turkey has extended its flight ban on Sulaimani International Airport for the fourth time since 2023, the director of the airport said on Monday.
“The Turkish ban on Sulaimani airport has been extended for six months,” Handren Mufti told Rudaw.
The flight ban is set to expire on July 6 this year, provided that it is not extended again.
The decision has prohibited flights in and out of Sulaimani from Turkey’s airspace since an initial three-month ban was imposed on April 3, 2023. The latest extension was in June and the ban was set to expire on December 7.
When first imposing the ban last year, Turkish foreign ministry spokesperson Tanju Bilgic said it was in response to an alleged “intensification” of Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) activity in Sulaimani province, referring to the crash of two helicopters carrying Syrian Kurdish fighters a month earlier.
Nine members of the anti-terrorism forces of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) were killed in the crash, including their commander, according to the SDF. The helicopters were bound for Sulaimani. Ankara alleges the Syria forces are affiliated with the PKK.
Turkish officials have repeatedly accused Sulaimani authorities of supporting the PKK and the flight ban is not the first time Ankara has taken punitive measures against the province.
Following Kurdistan Region’s independence referendum in 2017, international airspace to Erbil and Sulaimani airports was ordered closed by the Iraqi federal government. Turkey and most other countries re-opened their airspace to planes bound for Erbil in March 2018. However, Ankara refused to allow flights bound for Sulaimani, citing alleged support for the PKK by the province’s ruling Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK).
In 2017, Ankara expelled the PUK’s representative to Turkey after the PKK captured two Turkish intelligence agents in Sulaimani province.
Turkey also frequently carries out air and drone strikes on PKK targets in the province.
Speaking at a regional forum in Erbil in October 2023, PUK leader Bafel Talabani said that his party’s problems with Turkey are “hard to resolve.”
Qubad Talabani, a senior PUK member and the deputy prime minister of the Kurdistan Region, has held several meetings with Turkish diplomats in recent years, discussing the ban.
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