1. Brief Information about Treaty on Open Skies:

    a.   The Treaty on Open Skies (OST), which is complementary to CFE Treaty and Vienna Document; aiming to improve confidence and security and to provide openness and transparency to military activities through observation flights conducted among the States Parties, was signed on 24 March 1992, in Helsinki. The Treaty, which is politically and legally binding and which has still 34 State Parties, was ratified in Turkish parliament on 05 April 1994 and took its place in the internal law order through the Law 3980 of Ministers Council, on 09 April 1994. The note of accession of Turkey was sent to the depositary states (Canada and Hungary) on 30 November 1994. The Treaty entered into force on 01 January 2002.

    b.   The test observation flights were conducted amongst the State Parties in order to test the application of the Treaty, to identify the problems and shortfalls and to take necessary measures on time.

    c.   Turkey conducted a total of 13 reciprocal test observation flights until OST enter into force including one with each of the following countries; Germany in 1996, the US and the Russian Federation (RF) in 1997, Bulgaria, Romania, Ukraine, Czech Republic and Hungary in 1998, the United Kingdom, the RF and Bulgaria in 1999, the RF in 2000 and Italy in 2001.

    d.   With entry into force of the Treaty, the implementation of the Beginning Phase, which will last on 31 December 2005, started. During the period in which "the First Distribution Phase" covering the first two years of the Beginning Phase was applied (02 January 2002-31 December 2003), Turkey conducted two observation flights one of which was over the territory of the RF, and the other was a mutual one with Italian Republic over the territory of Ukraine. In the same period, the RF conducted one observation flight, Ukraine conducted two observation flights and Bulgaria conducted one observation flight over the territory of Turkey.

    e.   In the "Full Implementation Phase", which entered into force on 01 January 2006, all State Parties have gained the right to utilize all of their active quotas, which has been determined as 12 for the Republic of Turkey, in accordance with the Treaty.

    f.   In 2007, Turkey conducted the total number of four observation flights over the RF, two observation flights over Ukraine, one observation flight over Georgia and one observation flight over Bosnia-Herzegovina, and the RF and Ukraine conducted the total number of two observation flights over Turkey.

    g.  Turkey has the total number of eight observation flight quotas including four observation flight quotas over the RF, two observation flight quotas over Ukraine, one observation flight quota over Georgia and one observation flight quota over Bosnia-Herzegovina, and the RF has two observation flight quotas and Ukraine one observation flight quota over Turkey for 2008.

       2.  General Application Principles :

    a.   In the Treaty, a provision stating, "each State Party shall have the right to designate one or more types or models of aircrafts, which were registered by the respective authorities of any State Party as observation aircraft" is included. Within this framework, one of the CN-235 CASA aircrafts available in the inventory of Turkish Air Forces was modified and transformed into the OST observation aircraft of Turkey and it was approved as the Turkish OST Observation Aircraft during the multinational certification activities, which was held in Nordholz/Germany between 27 April 2004 and06 May 2004. 

    b.   A State Party which plans to conduct an observation flight over another State Party, is obliged to send its notification of intention to State Parties 72 hours prior to the beginning of the observation flight. The duration of the period of an observation flight is at the most 96 hours unless otherwise agreed.

    c.   The entire territory of the Observed State Party including areas designated as the "surface danger area" is open to the flight of the Observer State Party.

    d.   Studies on expanding the scope of OST so as to include natural disasters, environment/ecology, conflict prevention and crisis management in areas of application are in progress.