3 May. (EUROPE PRESS) –
The Turkish authorities have announced on Wednesday the closure of its airspace to flights from Armenia to third countries in protest at a recently inaugurated sculpture in the Armenian capital, Yerevan, commemorating those involved in the murder of Ottoman officials responsible for the Armenian genocide. .
“We cannot accept it,” said Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu, who stressed that Ankara “has closed airspace to Armenian planes in response.” “If it continues, we will take new steps,” he said in statements given to the Turkish television channel NTV.
However, Cavusoglu has confirmed that the trip of the president of the Armenian Parliament, Alen Simonián, continues and has affirmed that the Turkish Government has given him permission “exceptionally” to take a flight in order to participate in a meeting.
The statue was inaugurated on April 25 in Yerevan and commemorates the participants in the ‘Nemesis’ operation, which involved an Armenian underground cell to assassinate Turkish officials involved in the Armenian genocide, including the death of Talaat Pasha, ‘brain ‘of the massacres’ in March 1921 in the capital of Germany, Berlin.
Turkey and Armenia have been immersed for months in a process to normalize their relations, seriously damaged by Turkey’s support for Azerbaijan in the conflict around the Nagorno Karabagh region and by Ankara’s refusal to recognize the Armenian genocide committed by the former Ottoman Empire between 1915 and 1923.
Turkey does not deny that the massacres of Armenian civilians occurred, but does not admit that it was a genocide, and maintains that the deaths were not the result of a mass extermination plan arranged by the Ottoman state, although it is generally recognized as the first genocide. systematic of the Modern Age and is the second most studied case, behind the Jewish Holocaust.
