Turkish military plane with 20 on board crashes in Georgia

A Turkish military cargo plane carrying 20 people crashed in Georgia near the border with Azerbaijan on Tuesday, Turkish and Georgian authorities confirmed.

According to Türkiye’s Defence Ministry, the C-130 aircraft had taken off from Azerbaijan and was returning to Türkiye when it went down near the Georgia-Azerbaijan border. The ministry said there were “20 personnel on board, including the flight crew.”

President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan expressed deep sorrow over what he described as the loss of ‘our martyrs’ and said Türkiye was coordinating closely with Georgian authorities in the ongoing search and rescue efforts, state-run Anadolu Agency reported.

Türkiye’s Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan also held a phone conversation with his Georgian counterpart, Maka Bochorishvili, regarding the rescue operations and investigation into the crash.

Search and rescue teams from both Türkiye and Georgia are working at the crash site, though no official information about survivors has yet been released.