Turkey Probes Possibility That Military Plane Crash in Georgia Was Caused By Attack

Experts in Turkey are reportedly investigating whether a military transport plane that crashed in Georgia on Tuesday may have been shot down.

This is according to Abdulkadir Selvi, a columnist for the pro-government newspaper Hürriyet.

The Turkish defense ministry earlier confirmed that a Lockheed C-130 Hercules aircraft crashed in Georgia, killing all 20 service members on board. Ankara said a joint search and rescue operation was being conducted with Georgian authorities.

Footage circulating on social media shows the plane breaking apart and plunging into Georgia’s mountains, raising questions about the cause. Experts say the crew had no time to issue a Mayday or use the transponder, indicating that something went wrong very rapidly.

“Did our plane crash or was it shot down? A thorough investigation is underway. Both possibilities are being examined,” Selvi wrote in his Thursday column. He added that the Caucasus is a “turbulent region,” and therefore “all possible options are being explored.”

The wreckage will be transported to the Turkish city of Kayseri for technical examination, local media reported. The plane did not send out any distress signals before the incident.

Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said the aircraft’s black box had been recovered from the crash site in Georgia’s Kakheti district. A 46-member team from Turkey was deployed to assist in the recovery effort.

The C-130 had departed from Azerbaijan and was bound for Turkey when it broke apart midair. The 57-year-old aircraft had been in Turkish Air Force service since 2010.

Scott Bateman, a former Royal Air Force pilot and author of Hercules: The Story of an RAF Legend, said the way the aircraft disintegrated in flight was “exceptionally rare.” “The front of the aircraft has obviously broken off forward of the wing, yet the back has broken off behind it. Some catastrophic event has happened that has caused that,” Bateman told The Independent.

European security expert Samuel Doveri Vesterbye of the European Neighbourhood Council said aviation professionals who viewed the footage found it “odd” that multiple aircraft pieces fell before ground impact, suggesting “there could have been an in-air explosion.”