Turkish Airlines to fly to two new destinations in eastern Turkey

Turkey’s national flag-carrier announced that it will begin scheduled flights to Ordu-Giresun Airport from Istanbul on May 22, with flights also in the other direction. The number of weekly flights will be increased from four to five in June, the statement added.

The airline will also fly to the southeastern province of Hakkari, with daily mutual flights from Istanbul starting on May 26.

The Ordu–Giresun Airport on the Black Sea, which is the world’s first such facility outside of the Far East, is scheduled to be opened on May 22, with the attendance of both President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu. The construction, which started in June 2011, cost around 360 million Turkish Liras ($132.6 million). Around 35 million tons of rocks were used to fill in a 1.8 million square meter area of sea.

The construction of the Hakkari Yüksekova Airport, meanwhile, started five years ago, in a region where a decades-long armed conflict has taken place between the Turkish military and the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).