ANKARA, November 13. /TASS/. The Ministry of Defense of Turkey says that it is premature to make any official comments about the causes of the C-130 military transport aircraft crash in Georgia as the investigation is still ongoing.
"It is too early to comment on the causes of the incident at this time. The continuing incident investigation will shed light onto what happened," a ministry spokesperson told reporters in Ankara.
The plane that crashed "was purchased from Saudi Arabia on January 21, 2012 and was put into service in 2014 after maintenance works," undergoing an upgrade in 2022, the ministry said. "Contrary to allegations swirling around, this plane was not decommissioned by the user country [Saudi Arabia - TASS] but was a surplus [for the Saudi Air Force]. C-130 aircraft kept in reserve by Saudi Arabia," the ministry noted.
"The flight recorder and the voice recorder of the crashed plane were delivered to Turkey for an expert examination and are being reviewed in Ankara," the ministry said. "The incident cause will be established after a thorough investigation conducted by the incident investigation team. We thank the authorities of Georgia and Azerbaijan for the prompt response and mobilization of all resources in the search and rescue operation," it added.
The C-130 aircraft of the Turkish Air Force crashed in Georgia on Tuesday en route to the Turkish airbase in Kayseri. All the twenty servicemen on board died.