ISTANBUL - Turkey Friday lashed out Dutch and German aviation authorities for imposing a ban on a private Turkish airline, charging that no satisfactory explanation had been offered for the sanction which it said was taken unilaterally against international practices.
On Thursday, Dutch authorities had informed the Istanbul-based Onur Air that it had been grounded for a month due to "serious safety deficiencies observed in respect of aircraft, operational procedures and aircraft handling", according to a copy of the Dutch decision obtained by AFP.
German authorities followed suit, telling the company in a fax obtained by AFP that all granted permissions had been "revoked with immediate effect due to severe safety concerns". It did not say how long the ban would be in effect.
In response, the Turkish transport ministry accused Dutch authorities of failing to give a "satisfactory answer" to inquiries as to why they had grounded the company.
It charged that Dutch authorities had imposed the sanction without following the routine procedure of seeking a solution to the problem with Turkish civil aviation authorities.
The ministry denied the existence of any "technical deifciencies" that would prevent Onur Air from flying. "It would be out of the question for our ministry to allow the company to fly in case of such a deficiency," it said in a statement.
The foreign ministry has been called in to make diplomatic efforts to resolve the problem, it added.
Onur Air, on the other hand, condemned what it called politically and commercially motivated bans.
"It is a chauvinistic approach.... We believe the bans are motivated by political and commercial interests," Rauf Gerz, the spokesman for the company, told AFP.
He downplayed suggestions that the company's fleet of 28 aircraft was in need of maintenance. "We respect international norms," Gerz asserted.
The spokesman claimed that the Dutch ban particularly was aimed at allowing Dutch carriers to snatch up Onur Air's share.
"The Dutch ban on its own will affect some 9,300 people," Gerz said, adding that soon after the ban, a Dutch airline, Martinair, said it would shuttle between 1,500 and 2,000 of the Onur Air passagers back to the Netherlands this weekend.
"We have to seacrh for some other reason than safety behind the ban. They (Dutch authorities) are trying to eliminate us from the market," Gerz said.
Onur Air, founded in 1992 and which currently employs 879 people, makes 300 weekly flights from Turkey to Belgium, Austria, Germany and Spain and some 75 to the Netherlands.
Netherlands and Germany are both home to sizeable communities of Turkish immigrant workers, and several million tourists from the two countries travel to Turkey each summer for holidays.
05/13/2005 11:07 GMT