2009 Medair Bell 206 crash

A Bell 206L-4 LongRanger helicopter, tail number TC-HEK, operated by Medair while on a charter flight en route from Çağlayancerit in Kahramanmaraş Province to Yerköy in Yozgat Province, crashed on March 25, 2009, at around 16:00 EET (14:00 UTC) when it struck Mount Keş in central Turkey. The pilot and four passengers, including the leader of the Great Union Party (BBP) Muhsin Yazıcıoğlu, were killed in the accident. Only one passenger survived the crash with injuries and made an emergency call. Due to harsh weather conditions at the crash site, the victims and the wreckage could be recovered only after two days, and the injured passenger was found dead under snow five days later.

Flight history

The helicopter was chartered by the local leaders of a minor political party, the Great Unity Party (Büyük Birlik Partisi), to enable their party leader Muhsin Yazıcıoğlu to attend political rallies held on the same day in neighboring provinces as part of the campaign for the 2009 local elections. Accompanied by his party's three local leaders from Sivas Province and a news agency reporter, Yazıcıoğlu arrived in Çağlayancerit on March 25, 2009, at 13:00 EET (11:00 UCT) by helicopter, to make a speech. He told the crowd of 1,500 people gathered in the town square that it was the first time his party had chartered a helicopter, and this without any financial support from the state treasury.

As the rally in Çağlayancerit was going on, the helicopter was refueled at 13:30 local time at the Kahramanmaraş Airport. Piloted by Kaya İstektepe and carrying five passengers, it then lifted off at 14:42 to head for Yerköy, where Yazıcıoğlu had his next speech scheduled at 17:00. The helicopter did not arrive, and the crowd of 3,000 people gathered in the Station Square (İstasyon Meydanı) in Yerköy became worried. A short time later, the deputy leader of the BBP made the announcement that the helicopter carrying Yazıcıoğlu and his party members was missing.

Crash and rescue operation

As no direct contact with the helicopter could be established, search activities were initiated. At 16:10 local time one of the passengers, İsmail Güneş, a reporter for the Ihlas News Agency from Sivas, called the 112 emergency service from his mobile phone and said that "the helicopter he was onboard had crashed, he was injured with a broken leg and no one else, as he could see, had survived." After he added that "the battery of his mobile was running out, and he was about to die," then his phone went silent. He was unable to give any further information about the location of the crash site.

In order to locate the crash site, the GSM operator providing Güneş's mobile phone service was contacted. The calculated geographical coordinates determined the crash site was Mount Berit in the vicinity of Hacıömer and Sisne villages, around 20 km northeast of the town of Göksun in Kahramanmaraş Province. At 17:00 hours, search and rescue (SAR) teams were deployed on land and by air. Minister of Transport Binali Yıldırım said that "the rescuers were receiving signals from the mobile phones in the accident area, and they are trying to locate whereabouts of the crash."

State emergency management officials reported that two military special operations teams of the natural disaster rescue battalion (12 personnel each), civil defense SAR teams from Kahramanmaraş (129 personnel, 17 vehicles) and Adana (27 personnel, 8 vehicles and a SAR dog), a gendarmerie unit consisting of 345 personnel, 897 village guards and 60 volunteers of a disaster assistance and rescue team (AKUT) headed for the crash site on land, while two military Sikorsky helicopters equipped with night vision devices, one CASA aircraft of the Turkish Air Force, one police H-60 and one air ambulance helicopter joined the search efforts by air.

Teams of the gendarmerie and the Turkish Road Administration were engaged in opening roadways in the mountainous area under harsh weather conditions, where the temperature fell to -5 °C after midnight. The search operation in the region, at an elevation of around 2000 m, was hampered by fog, snowstorms and 2 m of snow on the ground.

The search efforts, concentrated around Kurucaova village and the foothills of Mount Kaman during the night, were suspended at 04:00 local time, but resumed at 05:30 hours with the sunrise. At around 06:00, the search teams found a group of 22 volunteers in danger of freezing and rescued them.

Minister of Interior Beşir Atalay rushed to the region and set up headquarters in the nearby village of Kızılöz to coordinate the SAR activities. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan also traveled to Kahramanmaraş to monitor the SAR activities.