Turkey announced on Wednesday that all 20 people aboard a military cargo plane that crashed in Georgia while returning from Azerbaijan had died.
The plane had departed from Ganja Airport in western Azerbaijan on Tuesday afternoon but crashed shortly after crossing the border into eastern Georgia, according to the defence ministry.
There were 20 people on board, including the flight crew.
“Our heroic comrades-in-arms were martyred on 11 November 2025 due to the crash of our C-130 military cargo aircraft, which had taken off from Azerbaijan to return to Turkey,” Defence Minister Yasar Guler said in a statement posted on his X account, along with 20 photographs of those who died.
Turkey has not disclosed the cause of the accident, but dramatic footage captured by eyewitnesses and shared by Azerbaijani media appeared to show the plane spinning horizontally with pieces of debris falling as it descended.
Georgia’s interior ministry confirmed that the plane went down in the Sighnaghi area, about five kilometres (3.1 miles) from Georgia’s border with Azerbaijan.
Georgian air traffic control reported that the aircraft disappeared from radar shortly after entering Georgian airspace without sending a distress signal and that the crash was reported by emergency services.
The C-130 Hercules military cargo plane is manufactured by the US company Lockheed Martin.
