A large section of the wreckage from a Turkish C-130 military cargo plane that crashed in eastern Georgia has been transported to Türkiye for detailed examination, state-run Anadolu Agency reported on Nov. 19.
The debris, carried by trucks under the coordination of a specially formed recovery team, was delivered to an air maintenance factory in the central city of Kayseri. Officials said the wreckage will undergo a comprehensive technical review as part of the ongoing investigation.
The move comes as an accident investigation team, dispatched to the crash site shortly after the Nov. 11 incident, continues its fieldwork.
Authorities have also begun analyzing the aircraft’s flight recorder, though the cause of the crash has not yet been determined. A full explanation is expected once the wreckage inspection is completed and the recorder is decrypted.
The C-130 was flying from the Azerbaijani city of Ganja to Türkiye when it went down near the Georgian town of Sighnaghi. The victims included crew members and military personnel involved in the maintenance of Turkish F-16 fighter jets deployed to Azerbaijan for Victory Day celebrations.
Families, senior officials and fellow soldiers gathered at an airbase in Ankara last week to honor the 20 victims, whose coffins were draped in Turkish flags before being sent to their hometowns for burial.
On Nov. 17, Defense Minister Yaşar Güler told reporters in parliament that decoding the flight recorder and compiling preliminary findings would take at least two months.
As a precaution, the military has grounded its remaining fleet of 18 C-130s pending technical inspections. The cargo planes are widely used by Türkiye's armed forces for transporting personnel and handling logistical operations.
