It’s Time to Ban Turkish Airlines from U.S. Airspace
Turkey’s Airspace Action Against Israel, and Its Support for Hamas, Should Compel President Trump to Act Immediately in Response
Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan says Turkey no longer will allow Israeli planes to overfly its airspace. Fidan, one of the top enablers of Hamas in Turkey, says President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan took the action in solidarity with Gaza. Turkey’s action is now a frequent tool of its regime: It previously has banned both overflights of Armenian passenger planes heading from Europe to Yerevan and flights into Sulaymani, the seat of Iraqi Kurdistan’s Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, in protest of that group’s political alliance with Syrian Kurds fighting the Islamic State and opposing Turkey-backed Islamist extremists.
In each case, Turkey’s action amounts to economic warfare. Israeli aircraft now must take long detours on flights to many European destinations, as well as the United States, potentially adding hundreds of dollars onto already high fares and hours onto each flight.
If President Donald Trump is serious about protecting Israel, countering terrorist groups like Hamas and its state sponsors, and advancing peace in the Middle East, he should act immediately to ban Turkish Airlines from American airspace. At issue is not only solidarity with a democracy under siege, but also broader security. More than a decade ago, leaked tape recordings revealed a conversation between Erdoğan’s private office and Turkish Air arranging a shipment of Turkish arms to Islamist terrorists killing Christians and moderate Muslims in Nigeria. This summer, officials in Côte d’Ivoire, a country with an old and diverse Lebanese business community, told me that Turkish Air had carried smuggled gold meant for Hezbollah. Turkish Air is also a legitimate target, both as a face of Turkey and as a public-private Turkish partnership where most of the private investment comes from Erdoğan’s supporters and donors.
Trump previously has brought Erdoğan to his knees. After Erdoğan took American Pastor Andrew Brunson as a hostage to trade for diplomatic chits, Trump refused to play into Erdoğan’s hands, instead slapping tariffs on some Turkish steel and threatening to crash Turkey’s currency. When Erdoğan saw that Trump was serious, he reversed course almost immediately. Should Turkish Air get a dose of its own medicine, Turkey might respond with humility, especially as Turkey’s U.S. routes likely bring it hundreds of millions of dollars in annual profit.
Turkish Air already has demonstrated its sensitivity to sanctions. After several refugees froze to death on the Belarus border with the European Union, European officials in Brussels quietly warned Turkey that if it continued to fly Syrian, Afghan, and Kurdish refugees to Belarus to pressure the European Union on other matters, Europe would sanction Turkish Air. Turkey ended the refugee flights almost immediately. That Turkish Air continues to serve occupied Cyprus, whose territory the Turkish Army occupies, is a thumb in the eye of the entire European Union.
Trump has stood up for Freedom of Navigation. There is no corollary freedom for air routes to traverse other countries but, generally speaking, only dictatorships like China, Russia, and North Korea regularly deny broad overflight permission to passenger aircraft. Cracking down on Turkey now might remind Erdoğan that, even if Trump considers him a friend, Trump does not consider him an equal. It also might support U.S. companies lest they become subject to an increasing patchwork of discriminatory no-fly zones promoted by terror-sponsoring regimes and their fellow-travelers.
