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Bulgarian government approves that Turkish military planes can fly over Bulgaria

Photo: EPA/BGNES

For the first time, Bulgaria will allow Turkish fighter jets to fly into the Bulgarian airspace. The government approved a memorandum of understanding between Bulgaria and Turkey for cross-border air policing operations. The agreement must be approved by law by Parliament. 

Bulgaria has long had such agreements with Romania and Greece. 

In 2018, the State of the Armed Forces Report announced that Bulgaria was also negotiating with Turkey for cross-border air operations. This caused a scandal and no agreement was reached then.

The idea of the agreements is that when an enemy plane enters near the airspace of one of the countries, fighter jets on duty from only one of the countries are raised. The agreement with Ankara will allow Turkish fighter jets to fly over Bulgarian airspace. The same applies to Bulgarian planes, which will be able to fly over Turkey in pursuit of an offender.



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