Turkey Bans Ethiopian Airlines Cargo Plane Overflight to Armenia

YEREVAN — Turkey has banned a cargo plane from flying from Europe to Armenia through Turkish airspace.

Hetq.am reported that a Boeing 777F of Ethiopian Airlines hired by an Armenian cargo company had to turn away from Turkish airspace at the last minute and return to the Belgian city of Liege on Tuesday. The publication cited a company executive as saying that the plane carried various consumer goods purchased by online shoppers in Armenia as well as neighboring Georgia. Another Ethiopian Airlines jet transported them to Yerevan’s Zvartnots airport on Wednesday after choosing a longer transit route through Russia, Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan.

The Armenian government’s Civil Aviation Committee confirmed on Friday that the Ethiopian-based carrier had prior permission to fly over Turkey. The committee could not say why Turkish aviation authorities revoked it without any explanation.

“It’s not pleasant to hear such news,” Hakob Arshakyan, a deputy speaker of the Armenian parliament, told reporters.

“I don’t know whether it was a political decision or there was a technical problem,” said Arshakyan. He said he hopes that Ankara will remove such hurdles in line with interim normalization agreements with Yerevan reached two years ago.

One of those agreements called for direct air freight traffic between Armenia and Turkey. It essentially remains on paper only, even though the Turkish government formally allowed cargo shipments by air to and from Armenia in January 2023. Ankara maintains a complete ban on imports of Armenian goods.

Turkey had banned all Armenian aircraft from its airspace in September 2020 three weeks before the outbreak of the Armenian-Azerbaijani war over Nagorno-Karabakh during which Ankara provided decisive military assistance to Azerbaijan.

The ban on Armenian overflights remained in force until the start of normalization talks between the two neighboring states and the resumption of Yerevan-Istanbul flights in early 2022. Even after that, Ankara has periodically banned Armenian carriers from flying over Turkey en route to Europe or the Middle East.

The other Turkish-Armenian agreement reached in July 2022 committed the two sides to opening their land border for holders of Armenian or Turkish diplomatic passport and citizens of third countries. A senior Armenian official complained last month that Ankara has still not taken any steps to implement it.

Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and other leaders have repeatedly made clear that further progress in the normalization process is contingent on the signing of an Armenian-Azerbaijani peace accord sought by Azerbaijan. They have also demanded that Armenia open an extraterritorial corridor to Azerbaijan’s Nakhichevan exclave.