Türkiye on Thursday confirmed it was one of its drones that found the crash site of Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi's helicopter, despite Tehran downplaying the Turkish drone’s role and highlighting the performance of its own drones.
“Türkiye rushed to help Iran on its dark day and fulfilled the necessity of good neighborly relations,” Defense Ministry sources said.
Referring to Defense Minister Yaşar Güler’s hour-by-hour account of the day Raisi’s helicopter crashed, the sources said there were three “points of pride” for Türkiye in search and rescue missions.
“The coordinated and speedy reaction of our government in the emergency, the progress of our domestic and national defense industry in drone technology, and the ability of the Turkish Armed Forces’ (TSK) qualified personnel’s capabilities to utilize it,” sources said.
Early on Monday, Türkiye’s Anadolu Agency (AA) reported that a Turkish Akıncı drone had identified "a source of heat suspected to be the wreckage of the helicopter carrying President Raisi" and shared its coordinates with Iranian authorities.
The drone’s success made headlines in media outlets around the world, with millions following Akıncı live as it searched for the helicopter.
"Despite Türkiye sending a drone equipped with night vision and thermal cameras, the drone failed to accurately locate the crash site due to its lack of detection equipment and control points below the cloud," Iran's military said in a statement, referring to the adverse weather conditions believed to be the cause of the crash.
Both Iran and Türkiye have a large drone arsenal and have focused on showcasing the effectiveness of their drones for export markets.
Iran's armed forces said they were not able to immediately deploy their own advanced drones, equipped with synthetic aperture radar, as they were located in the northern part of the Indian Ocean at the time.
The crash site, where the bodies of Raisi and Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian alongside other officials were recovered, was eventually found on Monday morning by Iranian ground rescue forces and by drones recalled from the Indian Ocean, according to the statement.
Iran's official news agency IRNA added that the coordinates shared by the Turkish drones were off by 7 kilometers (4 miles).
Iran's military said it had chosen Türkiye among "friendly countries" to help in the rescue mission due to its proximity to the accident site in the northwest of the country.
Defense Ministry spokesperson Zeki Aktürk also said Akıncı was dispatched to assist the search mission with the approval of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and at the request of Iranian authorities.
Speaking at a weekly briefing in Ankara, Aktürk went on to inform that Turkish forces had eliminated 1,048 members of the PKK terrorist group and its Syrian wing YPG in northern Iraq and Syria since the start of 2024, including 48 in the past week alone.
The PKK took up arms against the Turkish state in 1984 and is designated a terrorist organization by Ankara and its Western allies.
Since Turkish operations have driven its domestic presence to near extinction, the PKK has moved a large chunk of its operations to northern Iraq, including a stronghold in the Qandil Mountains, located roughly 40 kilometers (25 miles) southeast of the Turkish border in Irbil.
Türkiye has, over the past 25 years, operated several dozen military bases in northern Iraq in its war against the PKK and has been conducting airstrikes as part of “Claw” operations since 2022 to demolish terrorist lairs and prevent the formation of a terrorist corridor along its borders. It battles the PKK/YPG in the country’s northern regions, conducting a trio of successful counterterrorism operations there to prevent the formation of a terror corridor and enable the peaceful settlement of residents: Euphrates Shield (2016), Olive Branch (2018) and Peace Spring (2019).
Aktürk also said 364 individuals, including 10 terrorists, were nabbed while attempting to cross Turkish borders illegally over the past week.
“The number of individuals apprehended while attempting to cross our borders illegally since Jan. 1, 2024, has risen to 4,345 and the number of individuals prevented from crossing the border has reached 55,507," Aktürk said.
