Turkey closed its airspace for Russian planes flying to Syria

Europe, Middle East, News April 25, 2022 , by IRIA No Comments

A recent announcement from the Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu stated that Turkey has closed its airspace for Russian military and commercial flights heading towards Syria.

“We closed the airspace to Russia’s military planes, and even civilian ones, flying to Syria. They had until April, and we asked in March,” Cavusoglu said.

Cavusoglu said that it has been informed to the Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, who conveyed the information further to the Kremlin.

Turkey’s ban on Russian planes would stay in place for at least months. There has not been any immediate response from the Russian side on the closure of air space.

Russia and Turkey have a complicated relationship. From Syria to North Africa and Caucasus, the two countries are often found in opposing camps in conflicts. Russia, together with Iran, is a close ally of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad as he fights against the rebel groups in Syria. Turkey, on the other hand, supports the rebels in the Syrian conflict.

^{Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu speaks during a news conference after meeting with his counterparts Russian Sergey Lavrov and Ukrainian Dmytro Kuleba, amid Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, in Antalya, Turkey, on March 10, 2022. (Image Credit: Reuters)}

In 2015, Turkey shot down a Russian warplane near the Turkey-Syrian border causing a great rift in relations between the two countries. However, the relations between Turkey and Russia have been improving especially since Russia started its invasion of Ukraine.

Turkish President Erdogan decided to buy the Air Defense Missile System from Russia, which caused some tensions between Turkey and the U.S. Russian tourists also make up a large number of foreign visitors in Turkey, bringing the much-needed foreign currency into Turkey. Russian companies are building nuclear plants in Turkey.

Turkey refrained from joining the sanctions that most western countries have put against Russia. Turkish President Erdogan stated on March 25, “In terms of sanctions, we are studying certain UN guidelines, but let’s not forget that we cannot put aside our relations with Russia. You know, I explained this a long time ago, because today, if we take natural gas alone, about half of the natural gas we use comes from Russia. Besides that, we are building our Akkuyu nuclear power plant with Russia. We can’t ignore that.”

Turkey has been trying to mediate between Russia and Ukraine. So far, Turkey has hosted negotiation talks between the delegations from Russia and Ukraine in Istanbul while on another occasion in Antalya, Turkey mediated a meeting between Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and his Ukrainian counterpart Dmytro Kuleba.

*^{Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan attends a round of Russian-Ukrainian talks at the Dolmabahce Palace on March 29, 2022, in Istanbul, Turkey. (Image Credit: Sergei Karpukhin/TASS)}*

Turkish administration also wants to arrange a summit in Istanbul between the Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, however, Cavusoglu has made it clear that the chances of such a meeting between the two presidents are still very low at this point.

Many analysts believe that Turkey’s move to close its airspace to Russia is aimed to add external pressure on Moscow in order to increase the cost of war in Syria. Russia uses Turkish airspace to ferry its troops into Syria.

Another that Turkey aims to achieve with this move is to reaffirm its solidarity with the NATO alliance. The ban on airspace is unlikely to halt the Russian flight operation towards Syria as Moscow would simply divert its flights across Iranian airspace.