Turkey has closed its airspace to all Armenian flights heading to a third destination, in response to the unveiling of a monument in Yerevan which commemorate the team that is involved in an assassination plot against the high Ottoman officials responsible for the 1915 genocide.

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said Turkey would take further steps if the monument is not removed, Cerget News reported.

“They also show that they are not well-intentioned. In the face of this, of course, I will not stand with my hands tied. They started to fly to Armenian planes, to many places over us, and we closed our airspace. If they continue to do so, we will take other measures," Cavusoglu said.

Last week in Yerevan, the capital of Armenia, a new memorial was unveiled to commemorate Operation Nemesis, a program that was launched during the 1910s with the aim of tracking down and assassinating individuals considered responsible for the Armenian genocide. The genocide, which occurred during World War I in the Ottoman Empire, resulted in the deaths of up to 1.5 million Armenians.

The Armenian Revolutionary Federation, a nationalist group, executed the operation, which resulted in the killings of seven individuals, including Talat Pasha, one of the highest perpetrators of the Armenian genocide.

When Armenia gained its independence in 1991, Turkey was one of the first to recognize the country. However, Turkey closed its land borders with Armenia in 1993 due to the Armenian occupation of Nagorno-Karabakh, where the majority of the population is Armenian. The borders have remained closed and the countries stopped diplomatic ties ever since.

A normalization process between the neighboring countries aims to allow the establishment of diplomatic ties, the opening of sealed borders, and starting of economic, trade and transportation projects between the two nations.

In February, a border gate between the neighbors was opened for the first time in 35 years to allow aid for victims of the devastating earthquakes in southern Turkey.