Turkey-Armenia Resume Direct Flights After Two-Year Hiatus

Istanbul — Armenian carrier FlyOne landed at Istanbul International Airport on Wednesday evening, carrying 64 passengers on a flight from Yerevan's Zvartnots Airport, state news agency Anadolu reports, marking a thaw in tense relations.

This was the first direct commercial flight between the two neighbours after a more than two-year break and amid political manoeuvrers to normalize decade-long frozen ties.

FlyOne earlier said it will carry out two flights a week between Istanbul and Yerevan.

Later on Wednesday, Turkish budget carrier Pegasus Airlines plane is expected to depart Sabiha Gokcen Airport on Istanbul's Asian side for Yerevan, a company spokeswoman told dpa, adding three return flights are planned per week.

National carrier Turkish Airlines does not plan any Armenia flights "for the time being" but will consider future opportunities, a company spokesperson told dpa.

"We hope the normalization [with Armenia] will stay the course ... and no provocations will emerge," Omer Celik, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's ruling party spokesman, said in Ankara, according to Anadolu.

Turkish and Armenian envoys held talks aimed at full normalization last month in Moscow.

Turkey's borders with Armenia have been shut since 1993, according to Anadolu.

Armenia and Turkey have historically been at odds over the 1915 killings of an estimated 1.5 million Armenians at the hands of the Ottomans.

Turkey rejects classifying the killings as genocide.

Relations deteriorated in 2020 after Ankara helped ethnically Turkic Azerbaijan win territories back in the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh.

Direct flights, which last approximately two hours, were halted in November 2019 when Turkish carrier Atlas Jet announced bankruptcy, a spokesperson from the Turkish transportation ministry told dpa Wednesday.

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