By Siranuysh Gevorgyan
ArmeniaNow reporter
Armenian organizers of a humanitarian airlift to Syria said on Tuesday they were determined to continue their efforts to help compatriots in the 
embattled Middle Eastern country despite some traffic difficulties they faced in operating their maiden mission.
the humanitarian aid sent to Syria through the Help Your Brother program in Armenia was checked in Turkey before the plane was allowed to proceed to Aleppo, the city where most of Syria’s 80,000-strong Armenian community is concentrated.
The cargo including 14 tons of food and medicines that had been collected across Armenia reached Aleppo late on October 15 and will be distributed among Aleppan Armenians through the Red Crescent and the Armenian Apostolic Church.
Vahan Hovhannisyan, a leading member of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation, the party that initiated the movement for helping ethnic Armenians in Syria, said they had chosen neutral organizations for the distribution of aid so that neither the Syrian government nor the rebels accuse the movement of having a bias.
The Air Armenia cargo plane carrying out the flight had to land in the Turkish city of Erzurum and spend six hours there while Turkish authorities were inspecting the cargo. A number of international and local media reported that the aircraft was “grounded” by the Turkish authorities, but Hovhannisyan says the landing had been planned in advance and there was nothing “forced” about it.
Turkey, which is having increasingly tense relations with Syria, banned Syria-bound flights through its airspace on Sunday. They agreed to allow the plane carrying humanitarian aid from Armenia only on condition that it lands and undergoes a thorough inspection. Ankara and its international partners have voiced concerns about possible arms supplies to Syria, a country currently engulfed in a bloody internal conflict.
“The inspection in Erzurum was probably the most thorough the world has ever seen. They took out all boxes, checked the contents of 7,000 of them by hand and also used detection dogs. They had fire engines and troops on standby in what was a kind of staged display of force, but we take such things calmly. It was a humanitarian cargo and had to be allowed to proceed by all laws,” says Hovhannisyan, citing eyewitness accounts.
The senior Dashnaktsutyun representative says they could announce that the plane would land in Turkey beforehand, but there was a “subtle detail” stopping them from doing that.
“A few hours before the flight the Turkish authorities announced that they banned all flights to Syria through Turkish airspace. If we made any statement in those conditions, that would certainly have led to Turkey also applying its ban in our respect. We pretended that we weren’t aware of anything to make it too late to apply the ban against us, too,” explains Hovhannisyan.
Meanwhile, the United States has backed Turkey’s decision to ban Syria-bound planes from flying through its airspace, at the same time praising Ankara’s “measured and appropriate posture” with regard to the most recent incident in which the plane from Armenia carrying humanitarian supplies to Aleppo was checked.
“It [the Armenian flight] was confirmed to be humanitarian supplies, and they were allowed to go on to Syria,” said Spokesperson for the US Department of State Victoria Nuland at a press briefing in Washington, commenting on the development involving the Syria-bound plane carrying Armenian aid.
The U.S. official added: “We are encouraging all of Syria’s neighbors to be vigilant with regard to how their airspace is used, particularly now that we have this concrete example.”
Help Your Brother movement coordinator Lilit Galstyan thinks that the civil initiative has achieved great success as it has managed to attract all sections of the Armenian people.
A total of 40 tons of food as well as 30 million drams (about $74,000) have been collected as part of the initiative. The rest of the aid will be sent to Aleppo soon. The organizers, however, do not indicate the exact date of the second airlift. Certain donation pledges have been made to the project that would help take care of the expenses to get the aid to Aleppo by air. Galstyan says that the movement will not stop its work on collecting money and food as they understand the Syrian conflict “does not have a quick solution.”
Meanwhile, officials at the Syrian Air company said on Tuesday that in light of the Turkish ban they have rerouted their weekly flights to Armenia and from now on these flights will be operated via Iraq and Iran.