By Michael Rubin published in The Armenian Mirror-Spectator
Just over a century ago, Turkey and the Soviet Union signed the Treaty of Moscow. The agreement fixed the border and formalized relations between the two countries. Shortly after, the Treaty of Kars ensured mutual recognition of borders between Turkey on one hand and Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia on the other. Article XVII of the Treaty of Kars stipulated that there should be “free transit of persons and commodities without any hindrance.” Put another way, Turkey’s decades-long blockade of Armenia is illegal, notwithstanding Ankara’s argument that Turkey acts in solidarity with Azerbaijan. While generations of Turkish leaders argued Armenian rule in Nagorno-Karabakh justified the blockade regardless, Azerbaijan’s conquest and ethnic cleansing of the territory a year ago stripped away that pretext as well and exposed Turkey’s motivation as racial and religious hatred.
Against this backdrop, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and senior American diplomats seek to finalize an Armenia-Azerbaijan peace. They have made progress, but questions of basic trust remain. American officials pressured Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan to drop Armenia’s bid to host the COP29 summit, clearing the path for Azerbaijan to host it. Had Americans wanted to test Azerbaijan President Ilham Aliyev’s acceptance of Armenian legitimacy and existence among his nonsense rhetoric recasting Armenia as “Western Azerbaijan,” they would have demanded he co-host the festivities but Sullivan and Blinken were likely afraid of his answer.
Accepting Turkey’s illegal blockade, Azerbaijan’s revanchism, and both Turkey and Azerbaijan’s resistance to normalization with Armenia is cowardice. Rather than offer Erdogan and Aliyev incentives and reward their extortion, a better American policy would be to stand up to blackmail and force both dictators to abide by their signed agreements.
The White House and State Department could start with aviation. Despite its bluster, Turkey is a second-rate power, yet the reticence of American officials to push back on Turkish aggression encourages Turkish rejectionism.
Turkey’s traditional importance in the post-World War II world lies not in the size of its army, but rather its geographical location. That extends to aviation. Most aviation between the Middle East and Europe, or between the Caucasus and Europe must cross Turkish airspace, especially with much Ukrainian and Russian airspace off limits to international commercial aviation.
Turkey has sought to leverage its geographic position and current importance to international aviation to punish countries and ethnic groups that Erdogan despises.
On April 29, 2023, Turkey suddenly rescinded permission for FlyOne, Armenia’s budget airline, to transit Turkish airspace, forcing a flight from Paris to divert to Chisinau, Moldova. Erdogan acted suddenly to signal his displeasure with French policy in the Caucasus and to pressure Armenia. For flights originating or destined for European cities, such action soon became common and forced the cancellation of many FlyOne flights, though Turkey still allows FlyOne to fly from Yerevan to Sharm El Sheikh and Istanbul; flights to Barcelona skirt Turkish airspace.
FlyOne is not alone. Erdogan has long sought to dominate Iraqi Kurdistan for both economic and political reasons. The Kurdistan Democratic Party, the political arms of the Barzani tribe, has subordinated itself to Turkey, today acting as a Turkish satrapy. The Talabani family’s Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), however, rejects the Barzani’s pro-Turkey posture and has clashed diplomatically with Erdogan over Turkey’s desire to ethnically cleanse Syrian Kurds. As a result, Turkey has not only banned flights transiting its airspace to land in Sulaymani, a PUK-administered Iraqi Kurdish city, but has also bombed the airport, narrowly missing American personnel who were seeing off Gen. Mazloum Abdi, a Syrian Kurdish ally.
Rather than ignore Turkey’s efforts to constrain freedom of the skies, the United States should simply apply Turkish policy to Turkish airlines themselves. Turkey refuses to allow FlyOne to transit as it flies to Paris? Then the United States should rescind Turkish Airlines’ ability to transit American airspace. Likewise, as Turkey seeks to compel other airlines to honor its ban on Sulaymani, then the United States should make New York airports off-limits to Turkish flights, including Erdogan’s private plane when he flies to the UN General Assembly; he can fly instead to Philadelphia or Boston and drive. The same holds true for Azerbaijan Airlines if it ever resumes its Baku to New York route cancelled five years ago.
President Ronald Reagan used force to defend freedom of navigation at sea. Individual countries exert sovereignty over their own airspace and so the force appropriate to defend transit of international waters would be inappropriate with regard to airspace. Coercion, however, is welcome. Turkey has been violating its treaty obligations to Armenia for decades; rather than move toward peace, its airspace shenanigans suggest Erdogan is insincere about normalization. Erdogan’s posture toward Sulaymani suggests the same with regard to Kurdish self-rule. Airspace has become a barometer of Erdogan and Aliyev’s sincerity.
Rather than kowtow to dictators, the next American president should force them to live by their own precedents. It is time to limit Turkish Air overflights of American airspace.
(Michael Rubin is director of policy analysis at the Middle East Forum and a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.)
