ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – Turkish authorities have closed the Hakkari Yuksekova Airport in the country’s Kurdish southeast for about three months due to the threat of “terrorist attacks,” the Hurriyet Daily News reported on Tuesday.
It said that Selahaddin Eyyubi Airport, which was inaugurated in early May in Hakkari’s Yuksekova district, would remain closed for about the next three months.
The news of the closure comes amid a deadly crackdown by Turkey on the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), whose bases and installations the Turkish military and air force have been pounding in northern Iraq and in Turkey’s own Kurdish southeast since renewed fighting in late July.
The fighting has shattered a 2013 peace accord that was meant to end Turkey’s three-decade war the PKK in which some 40,000 people have died.
“The construction of the Hakkari Yüksekova Airport started five years ago in a region where a decades-long armed conflict has taken place between the Turkish military and the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK),” Hurriyet reported. “The construction cost totaled around 102 million Turkish Liras (about $35.5 million),” it said.
Turkish Airlines, the country’s national carrier, began flights to Yuksekova airport on May 26.
Hurriyet quoted Yüksekova Trade and Industry Chamber head, Salih Ozdemir, as saying that around 23,000 passengers had used the airport during its first two months of operation.
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