ANKARA: Turkiye closed its airspace to flights to and from an airport in Kurdish-administered northern Iraq, a top Turkish official announced Wednesday, citing an alleged increase in Kurdish militant activity threatening flight safety.
Foreign Ministry Spokesman Tanju Bilgic said the Turkish airspace has been closed to flights taking off and landing at Suleimaniyah International Airport, in northern Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdish region, since Tuesday.
The closure was in response to an alleged increase in the activities of the banned Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, in Suleimaniyah as well as its “infiltration” into the airport, Bilgic said in a written statement.
The decision comes weeks after two helicopters crashed in northern Iraq, killing Kurdish militants on board. The incident fueled claims that the PKK was in possession of helicopters which infuriated Turkish authorities.
The main US-backed and Kurdish-led force in northeastern Syria later said it lost nine fighters, including a commander, in the crash which occurred during bad weather while on route to Suleimaniyah. The nine killed included elite fighters who were in Iraq as part of an “exchange of expertise” in the fight against the Daesh group, said the group known as the Syrian Democratic Forces, or SDF.
The PKK has been waging an insurgency against Turkiye since the 1980s and is considered a terrorist group by Ankara, the United States and the European Union. Its militants have established safe havens in northern Iraq and frequently come under attack by Turkiye in the region.
Turkiye also considers a Syrian Kurdish militant group, which forms the backbone of the SDF, as a terrorist organization. The United States however, distinguishes between the PKK and SDF and doesn’t consider the SDF a terrorist group.
Bilgic said the Turkish airspace would remain closed until July 3, when Turkish authorities would review the security situation.
The helicopter crash also fed into a local rivalry between the two main Kurdish parties in Iraq.
Officials from the Kurdish Democratic Party, which has maintained largely good relations with Turkiye, alleged after the crash that the helicopters had been originally purchased by the rival Patriotic Union of Kurdistan party, which has its stronghold in Suleimaniyah, and that they had been flying without permission from the regional government.
Turkiye closes airspace to flights using north Iraqi airport
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Turkiye closes airspace to flights using north Iraqi airport
- The closure was in response to an alleged increase in the activities of the banned Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, in Suleimaniyah as well as its “infiltration” into the airport
- The decision comes weeks after two helicopters crashed in northern Iraq, killing Kurdish militants on board
Take back and prosecute your jailed Daesh militants, Iraq tells Europe
RAQQA: Baghdad on Friday urged European states to repatriate and prosecute their citizens who fought for Daesh, and who are now being moved to Iraq from detention camps in Syria.
Europeans were among 150 Daesh prisoners transferred so far by the US military from Kurdish custody in Syria. They were among an estimated 7,000 militants due to be moved across the border to Iraq as the Kurdish-led force that has held them for years relinquishes swaths of territory to the advancing Syrian army.
In a telephone call on Friday with French President Emmanuel Macron, Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia Al-Sudani said European countries should take back and prosecute their nationals.
An Iraqi security official said the 150 so far transferred to Iraq were “all leaders of the Daesh group, and some of the most notorious criminals.” They included “Europeans, Asians, Arabs and Iraqis,” he said.
Another Iraqi security source said the group comprised “85 Iraqis and 65 others of various nationalities, including Europeans, Sudanese, Somalis, and people from the Caucasus region.”
They all took part in Daesh operations in Iraq, he said, and were now being held at a prison in Baghdad.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has said that “non-Iraqi terrorists will be in Iraq temporarily.”
The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces jailed thousands of militant fighters and detained tens of thousands of their relatives in camps as it pushed out Daesh in 2019 after five years of fighting.
