Four soldiers martyred in Sikorsky S-70 crash in Malatya

Four soldiers were martyred when a Sikorsky S-70 helicopter belonging to the Land Forces Command crashed on the evening of 12 November in Samanköy, a neighbourhood of Malatya's Yeşilyurt district. The scale of the accident became clear with the first light of day: the helicopter came down in open terrain close to a residential area, and the garden wall of one of the nearby houses was knocked down. The crash occurred at a point close to the Samanköy Container City, where earthquake survivors are living.

The soldiers martyred were Army Pilot Major Erdem Çimen (41), Army Pilot Major Orhun Pınar (37), Technician Senior First Sergeant Hüseyin Zehir and Technician Senior Sergeant Serkan Önder.

İYİ Party deputy parliamentary group chair Turhan Çömez said on a live SÖZCÜ TV broadcast, based on information he had received from the region, that the pilots had made a special effort to take the residential area into account: "The soldiers did everything they could to keep the helicopter from falling on the village." The exact cause of the accident will become clear after the technical investigation and the crash report.

Abuzer Çakaş, who lives in the container city 300 metres from the crash site, said: "The helicopter's sound changed before it went down. After that rasping noise it moved 200 metres forward and slammed into the ground. Suddenly its nose buried itself. There was an explosion, then we ran to the back. We saw that it was burning. There was nothing we could do."

According to a compilation by Sözcü based on Turkish Grand National Assembly records, General Staff statements and news archives, S-70s have been involved in numerous accidents since 1993. The heaviest disaster in the records occurred on 10 November 2012 in Siirt's Pervari district; 17 soldiers were martyred when the helicopter crashed in mountainous terrain. Seven were martyred in Giresun in 2016 and 12 in Tunceli in 2017, and there was also a crash in Gaziantep in 2024. In 2015, CHP's Ali Öz and 19 other MPs submitted a parliamentary inquiry motion to investigate the S-70 crashes.

The bodies of the four martyrs were brought to the Ankara Forensic Medicine Institute after a ceremony held at Malatya Airport. Orhun Pınar's body was buried yesterday following the funeral prayer performed at noon at the Ahmet Hamdi Akseki Mosque; Erdem Çimen, Hüseyin Zehir and Serkan Önder are expected to be buried today.

All four of the martyred soldiers were married and had children. Erdem Çimen leaves behind his wife, who lives in İzmir, and two children; Orhun Pınar leaves behind one child; Hüseyin Zehir, from Hatay's Payas district, leaves behind his three-year-old son; and Serkan Önder, from Kayseri, leaves behind his nine-month-old daughter Gökçe. The five children left behind by the four martyrs have been left without their fathers.

Sözcü noted that the dates of the two air disasters were only one day apart: on 11 November 2025 a C-130 military cargo plane returning to Turkey from Azerbaijan crashed in Georgia and 20 soldiers were martyred. The Turkish Armed Forces has lost 24 soldiers in the space of a year.