In the Russian tourist market on Saturday night, a real panic began: in the top of Yandex.News, there was news under the headline “Turkey has closed the airspace for Russian aircraft.” Tourists who bought tours to Turkey for the May holidays, decided that they could not fly anywhere. However, they are partially reassured: this news, or rather Turkey’s decision to close its airspace to Russian aircraft, applies only to flights to Syria.
The details are as follows: Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu gave a traditional interview before his official visit to Uruguay, during which he announced the closure of the republic’s airspace for all civilian and military aircraft carrying troops from Russia to Syria.
“We have closed the airspace for Russian military planes and even civilian planes bound for Syria and carrying troops. This was done by analogy with the Montreux Convention. Prior to the entry into force of this decision, we gave Moscow a three-month reprieve until the end of April. Now this ban has come into force,” the minister explained.
Russia has not commented on Turkey’s move. Russia, along with Iran, has given decisive support to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad during the Syrian civil war. During the conflict, Turkey supported the Syrian rebels.
Ankara’s relations with Moscow deteriorated shortly after Turkey shot down a Russian military plane near the Turkish-Syrian border in 2015.
Turkey is currently trying to mediate a ceasefire in Ukraine. Ankara is currently trying to hold a summit in Istanbul between Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, although Cavusoglu has acknowledged that the prospects for such talks remain unclear.
Thus, this decision does not apply in any way to tourism and Russian tourists. On the contrary, Turkey, which is dependent on Russian tourists, is doing everything possible to resume charter flights from Russia to Antalya. To do this, the country is urgently creating 3 new airlines to transport Russians at the same time, as most aircraft of Russian carriers can not leave Russia due to Western sanctions.
For those who care about a healthy lifestyle, we recommend reading: “It became known how to whiten teeth at home.”