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A third unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) was found off Türkiye’s Bartin coast in the Black Sea, marking the third such discovery in 70 days. The object was spotted near Kapisuyu village beach.
Gendarmerie teams recovered the drone for examination.
Young people swimming off Kapisuyu village, located near the Bartin-Kastamonu provincial border, first spotted the object. After the swimmers alerted authorities, a coast guard boat was dispatched to the area.
Due to the risk that the drone was carrying munitions, authorities allowed it to drift toward shore under coast guard supervision. Once the UAV reached the beach, gendarmerie teams examined it under extensive security measures.
Initial assessments found no munitions aboard the drone. As with previous finds, the fuselage and wings were made of styrofoam, the propellers of wood, and the fastening screws of plastic.
The UAV is believed to be of Russian origin, though further examination in Ankara will confirm this.
Two other UAVs were found in Bartin earlier this year.
One was discovered on June 14 at Kapisuyu Village Beach, and the other on June 19 at Cakraz Beach in Bartin's Amasra district.
All three drones found in Bartin over the past 70 days look similar and match the types of unmanned aerial vehicles used in the Russia-Ukraine war.
Drone and naval drone discoveries have become a recurring occurrence along Türkiye's Black Sea coastline since the Russia-Ukraine war escalated, with incidents recorded in provinces including Bartin, Ordu, Sakarya, Samsun, Zonguldak, and Istanbul.
The first of the Bartin-area incidents came on June 14, when an armed drone loaded with munitions crash-landed at Kapisuyu Beach. This prompted gendarmerie units to evacuate the area while ordnance disposal teams carried out a controlled destruction of the explosives.
Since the start of the war, a series of similar discoveries has been made. These include a Ukrainian Magura naval drone found by fishermen, a Russian-made Geran-2 drone that washed ashore in Ordu in February, and a U.S.-made AEGIR-W unmanned surface vessel (USV) built by the Sierra Nevada Corporation. The USV, found carrying an active warhead, washed up near Ordu's Unye district in March; Turkish Navy explosive ordnance disposal units towed it offshore and destroyed it.
More recent incidents include a suspected kamikaze drone with explosive material that washed ashore on Istanbul's Karaburun coast in July, a Russian-made Gerbera-type drone fuselage found in Sakarya's Kaynarca district in mid-August with no explosives detected, and a stray drone that crashed into a police station in Trabzon later the same week.
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