Türkiye extends flight ban on Sulaimani airport

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Turkey on Monday extended its flight ban on Sulaimani International Airport for another three months, confirmed an airport official.

Dana Mohammed, communications director at Sulaimani airport, told Rudaw that the Turkish Civil Aviation Authority has “decided to extend the ban until January 6.”

Turkey imposed a flight ban on the airport on April 3, 2023 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.

The fresh ban on the Sulaimani airport comes despite the restoration of peace process in Turkey, following the PKK's decision to dissolve itself and lay down arms, in response to a historical February call by the party's jailed leader Abdullah Ocalan. 

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 the 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).

The Iraqi government recently approved a request to rename the Sulaimani airport after prominent Kurdish figure and late Iraqi president Jalal Talabani.

[Source: Rûdaw English]