ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Ankara on Saturday extended for another six months its ban on flights in and out of Sulaimani airport from Turkish airspace, an airport official told Rudaw. The ban has been in effect since April.
Turkey has extended its flight ban on the airport until June 22, 2024, Handren Mufti, the director of Sulaimani International Airport, told Rudaw.
This marks a second extension of the measure since the initial three-month ban was imposed on April 3. In July, Turkey extended it until January 3 of next year.
In April, then-Turkish foreign ministry spokesperson Tanju Bilgic said that the flight ban was in response to an alleged “intensification” of Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) activities in Sulaimani province, referring to the crash of two helicopters carrying Syrian Kurdish fighters a month prior.
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.
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.
And Turkish forces frequently carry out aerial attacks in the province on the grounds of targeting the PKK.