Turkey extends suspending flights to and from Iraq's Sulaimaniyah Airport until next year

 Turkey on Monday extended its suspension of flights to and from the Sulaimaniyah International Airport until early next year, said Kurdish officials, as well as spokespersons from Turkish Airlines.

On 3 April, the Turkish foreign ministry announced the official suspension of its airspace access for flights from and to the Sulaimaniyah International Airport, citing security concerns regarding the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK).

Rudaw, a Kurdish news outlet close to Nechirvan Barzani, the president of the Kurdistan region, first reported the extension citing officials from Turkey's national carrier, Turkish Airlines.  Haval Abu Bakr, Governor of Sulaimaniyah also confirmed the news during an interview with K24, a Kurdish outlet close to Masrour Barzani, caretaker prime minister of the Kurdistan Regional Government.

When contacted by The New Arab, the Sulaimaniyah office of Turkish Airlines indicated that flight tickets to and from Sulaimaniyah International Airport are still on the cancellation track.

TNA also contacted Handren Hiwa Mufti, director of Sulaimaniyah International Airport, as well as Abu Bakr, but they were not immediately available to comment.

"The decision was taken upon the intensification of PKK terrorist organisation's activities in Sulaymaniyah, infiltration by the terrorist organisation into the airport and thus threatening of flight safety," the spokesperson of the Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ambassador Tanju Bilgiç said in April.

Mufti previously during an interview with TNA dismissed all of Turkey's allegations and asserted that the airport is civilian and "fully secured".

"I assure everyone that there are no suspicious activities inside Sulaimaniyah International Airport. The airport is under the inspection of the Iraqi civil aviation authority," Mufti said.

On 18 March, two helicopters mysteriously crashed in the Duhok province of the Kurdistan region, killing at least nine members of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), including SDF counter-terrorism commander Shervan Kobani - a cousin of SDF leader Mazloum Abdi.

The SDF said the delegation was on its way to Sulaimaniyah "to exchange security and military expertise", and they crashed due to "bad weather".

Following the incident, Masrour Barzani claimed that the crashed helicopter "had been purchased” by a group within the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), which is a partner in the KRG and mainly administers Sulaimaniyah and Halabja provinces. 

Abdi survived a drone attack in the vicinity of Sulaymaniyah International Airport just days after Turkey’s decision to ban flights to the airport.

PUK's leader Bafel Talabani, in December, visited northeast Syria and met with Abdi, and senior political leaders in northeast Syria. He also expressed support for Kurds in Turkey and Syria during a speech marking Newroz celebrations on 21 March.

Turkey and its Western allies blacklist the PKK as a terrorist group.

But, despite shrill complaints from Ankara, Washington supports the SDF, which is the Kurdish administration's de facto army in the northeast and led the battle that dislodged militants of the Islamic State from its last scrap of territory in Syria in 2019.

Ankara regards the YPG, a dominant faction in the Syrian Kurdish administration, as an offshoot of the PKK and has mounted repeated armed incursions to force its fighters out of areas near the border.