Turkish air space closed (only) to planes carrying troops from Russia to Syria

Turkish air space has been closed to military and civilian planes carrying troops from Russia to Syria after consultation with Moscow, Turkey’s state broadcaster TRT Haber cited Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu as saying on Saturday.

“We closed airspace to Russia’s military planes and even to civilian planes going to Syria and carrying soldiers,” Cavusoglu was quoted as saying to reportersy. He said permission had been given for three month periods until April, and then the flights stopped.

It is not clear from this statement whether only flights carrying troops or also flights carrying armaments will be restricted.

It should be remembered that until now Turkey was the only NATO state that allowed Russian military flights and Russian civilian flights to fly over. In these two months of war we have traced several of these flights and, as we pointed out in this article, NATO flights operating over the Black Sea do not cross Turkish airspace.

Same route (using #Turkey‘s airspace) for the return flight from Latakia AB, #Syria, to Moscow, #Russia pic.twitter.com/GcpxGHNB3t

— Itamilradar (@ItaMilRadar) March 13, 2022

From what we understand, however, the overflight ban will be limited only to operations in Syria and not to flights to other destinations, so a step forward but not too much…