Turkey closes airspace to Armenian flights over monument

By SUZAN FRASER
Associated Press

ANKARA, Turkey (AP) — Turkey’s foreign minister says his country has closed its airspace to Armenian aircraft, in retaliation for the erection of a monument in the Armenian capital, Yerevan. Mevlut Cavusoglu told NTV television in an interview on Wednesday that Turkey would consider further measures if the monument is not removed. Turkey maintains that the monument “glorifies” people involved in schemes to assassinate Ottoman officials in the 1920s and Turkish diplomats in the 1970s and 1980s. The move comes as Turkey and Armenia, which have no diplomatic relations, had been engaged in talks to normalize ties and put decades of acrimony behind them.