\ANKARA, Turkey — All 20 personnel aboard a Turkish military cargo plane were killed when the C-130 aircraft crashed in Georgia’s Sighnaghi municipality near the Azerbaijani border on Tuesday, Turkey’s Defense Minister Yasar Guler confirmed Wednesday.
The plane was flying from Ganja, Azerbaijan to Turkey when contact was lost just minutes after entering Georgian airspace. The aircraft did not issue any distress signal, according to Georgia’s aviation authority.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said the victims were part of a unit that had traveled to Azerbaijan to join the country’s Victory Day celebrations on Saturday, commemorating Azerbaijan’s 2020 victory over Armenia in the long-standing conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh.
A 46-member Turkish accident investigation team has arrived at the crash site and is coordinating with Georgian authorities to inspect the wreckage.
Erdogan said the plane’s flight data recorder has been recovered, and the investigation into the cause of the crash is ongoing. So far, the remains of 19 victims have been found, with search efforts continuing for the last missing person.
Footage from Turkey’s private broadcaster NTV showed debris scattered across farmland surrounded by hills, indicating the force of the impact.
“Our heroic comrades-in-arms were martyred on November 11, 2025, when our C-130 military cargo plane, which had taken off from Azerbaijan en route to our country, crashed near the Georgia-Azerbaijan border,” Guler said in a message posted on X, along with photos of the fallen personnel.
Condolences poured in from neighboring and allied nations. Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and Georgian Foreign Minister Maka Botchorishvili extended their sympathies to Turkish officials. U.S. Ambassador to Turkey Tom Barrack and NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte also expressed condolences, honoring the Turkish military personnel who died in the crash.
According to Sozcu newspaper, the ill-fated aircraft belonged to the 12th Air Base Command in Kayseri, central Turkey. It departed from Kayseri on Monday, flew to Azerbaijan to pick up military personnel in Ganja, and was en route to Merzifon in northern Turkey when the crash occurred.
The C-130 plane was manufactured in 1968 and first served in Saudi Arabia before being added to the Turkish Armed Forces fleet in 2010, Sozcu reported.
Edgardo Hernal started college at UP Diliman and received his BA in Economics from San Sebastian College, Manila, and Masters in Information Systems Management from Keller Graduate School of Management of DeVry University in Oak Brook, IL. He has 25 years of copy editing and management experience at Thomson West, a subsidiary of Thomson Reuters.
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