All 20 personnel on board a military cargo plane that crashed in Georgia were killed, Turkish Minister of National Defense Yasar Guler said yesterday.
The C-130 plane had taken off from Ganja, Azerbaijan, and was on its way to Turkey when it crashed on Tuesday in Georgia’s Sighnaghi municipality, close to the Azerbaijani border. The cause of the crash is being investigated.
A Turkish accident investigation team reached the crash site early yesterday and was inspecting the wreckage of the plane, in coordination with the Georgian authorities, the Turkish Ministry of National Defense said.
Photo: EPA / Ministry of Internal Affairs of Georgia Press Service
The wreckage was spread across a plain that includes farmland and is surrounded by hills, Turkish private broadcaster NTV reported from the site.
Debris from the aircraft was scattered across multiple locations, the report said.
“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 wrote on X, together with photographs of the military personnel who were killed.
On Tuesday, Turkey’s state-run Anadolu news agency quoted the Georgian aviation authority as saying that contact with the plane was lost a few minutes after it had entered Georgia’s airspace.
The plane had not issued a distress signal, it said.
C-130 military cargo planes are widely used by Turkey’s armed forces for transporting personnel and handling logistical operations.
Turkey and Azerbaijan maintain close military cooperation.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and other Turkish officials had attended Azerbaijan’s Victory Day celebrations in Baku on Saturday last week marking Azerbaijan’s military success over Armenia in the 2020 control of Karabakh region, known internationally as Nagorno-Karabakh, a conflict that had lasted nearly four decades.
It was not immediately clear if the military personnel on the cargo had attended the ceremonies.
Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and Georgian Minister of Foreign Affairs Maka Botchorishvili extended their condolences to their Turkish counterparts over Tuesday’s crash.
“We are deeply shocked by the news of the loss of life of our soldiers in the accident that occurred on Georgian soil,” Aliyev said in a message, Anadolu reported.
US Ambassador to Turkey Tom Barrack offered his condolences and affirmed Washington’s solidarity with Ankara.
NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte also extended his sympathies, honored the military personnel who were killed and thanked all NATO personnel for their service.
There was no information on funeral arrangements or when the remains would be returned to Turkey.
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