Petrosyan served as Director of the General Department of Civil Aviation from 1993 to 1996.
Speaking to ARMENPRESS, he revealed a few details from the history of establishment of air connection between Armenia and Turkey in the early 90s, noting that at that time it was the European Civil Aviation Conference (ECAC) that forced Turkey to open its airspace with Armenia.
Petrosyan said that when he was first appointed as GDCA chief in 1993, he asked specialists to elaborate why the Armenia-Turkey air border was closed, and it turned out that when Armenia gained its independence the aviation authorities did not warn that air borders are subject to confirmation as well. The Armenian government applied to ECAC, and meanwhile President Levon-Ter Petrosyan and his chief advisor Gerard Libaridian were engaged in negotiations with Turkey’s leadership.
“I notified the government about this and said that this issue must somehow be resolved because in addition to being in a land blockade we were also in an air blockade. And Turkey didn’t have the right to do so. Turkey was bringing forward justifications saying “the border which we have is the border of the Soviet Union, and the Soviet Union doesn’t exist anymore.” And we were forced to approve that this is the border of Armenia. The ECAC helped us a lot. We struggled for it for more than a year, and eventually ECAC forced Turkey to open its air border with Armenia. The process was very difficult because of the absence of diplomatic relations. And suddenly one day my Turkish counterpart called me and said “Efendi Petrosyan, can you come? We’ve already prepared the paperwork to open the air border”. I answered “perhaps you could come?” He sai...
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