Turkey announced to close its airspace with Russian planes carrying troops to Syria
Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu on April 23 announced that Ankara does not allow Russian planes to fly over Turkish airspace to Syria, according to RT Radio.
“We have closed our airspace to planes military Russia and even civilian planes carry troops to Syria,” Foreign Minister Cavusoglu told reporters before he boarded a plane to Uruguay.
Cavusoglu added that Ankara has granted permission for a Russian plane carrying troops to fly through its airspace Turkey with each license tranche valid for 3 months and the most recent expiring this month. “Therefore, the relevant flights have been halted,” Cavusoglu stressed, adding that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan had informed Russian President Vladimir Putin regarding the above decision.
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Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu speaks during a press conference in Ankara AFP |
According to Cavusoglu, discussions on resuming Russian flights to Syria will be included in the negotiations under the Montreux Convention, an international agreement governing maritime navigation in the Black Sea. . This convention guarantees unrestricted access to the Black Sea to civilian ships in peacetime, but allows Turkey to close the Bosporus and Dardanelles straits to military ships in wartime.
Turkey activated Montreux Convention to prevent Russian warships from approaching the Black Sea after Moscow launched a military operation in Ukraine on February 24, but only limited Russian ships with home ports outside the Black Sea.
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Although a member of NATO, Turkey does not impose sanctions or condemn Russia for military campaign in Ukraine. Instead, Ankara identifies itself as a mediator between Moscow and Kyiv.
Although negotiations aimed at resolving the recent Russia-Ukraine conflict, including the one in Turkey on March 29, did not produce any positive results, Cavusoglu said on April 23 that the talks were secret. Confidentiality is still going on and the parties are still drafting a “draft joint statement”, focusing on “fairness, security and assurances”, according to RT.
There is currently no information on the Russian side’s reaction to Foreign Minister Cavusoglu’s statement.
at Blogtuan.info – Source: thanhnien.vn – Read the original article here
