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A 63-year-old man in Türkiye's Karasu district discovered a washed-up unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) on a beach, used a smartphone AI app to check it for explosives, and then loaded it into his car with his wife and grandson to take home, where authorities later confirmed it carried no explosives.
The incident occurred on Saturday on the shore of the Camitepe neighborhood in Karasu district.
Ali Cabuk, 63, was on a morning outing with his wife and grandson in an off-road vehicle when he spotted a UAV that had washed up from the sea onto the shore.
Cabuk photographed the drone and asked an AI application on his phone about it.
"I asked artificial intelligence. It told me it came from Russia and that there was no bomb inside. So we loaded it into the car," Cabuk, who spoke to the Ihlas News Agency (IHA).
With the help of his wife and grandson, he grabbed the aircraft by its wings and loaded the roughly 15- to 20-kilogram drone into the trunk of his off-road vehicle, driving it back to an area near his home.
After Cabuk notified the local neighborhood headman, who alerted the gendarmerie, security forces arrived at the location and secured the area before calling in bomb disposal specialists (PAMIT).
"The gendarmes came and carried out their inspection. We notified the teams, and the gendarmes called Adapazari. They summoned the bomb disposal teams. We didn't even approach it; we stayed about 500 meters away. They explained it was dangerous," Cabuk said.
He said the bomb disposal team arrived about an hour later and confirmed the drone carried no explosives.
Because the UAV was too large to fit into gendarmerie vehicles, Cabuk again used his own vehicle to transport it to the police station.
"I took it to the station myself. It was so big it wouldn't fit in their car. I helped them out, and we even covered it so no one would see it. We got it to the gendarmerie station without anyone noticing. They put it in a room; they didn't even leave it outside," he said.
Cabuk said he only later realized how risky his actions had been, after seeing the security perimeter set up by responding teams.
"We weren't scared, because pieces kept washing up regularly. I said, 'One day I'll get to the bottom of this,' and that day came. I have the pieces in my hands," he said.
"Afterward, the gendarmes told me I had done something very dangerous. That's when I understood how big and dangerous what I'd done was. I won't do something like this again. I'll report it directly to the gendarmerie," Cubuk said.
Cabuk also said he had examined the drone's engine out of curiosity.
"It had a nice two-cylinder engine. I tinkered with it a bit. I only looked at the engine; I didn't touch the front part at all. There was a battery and fuel tank there; I didn't touch those. The engine caught my interest. It had a nice engine," he said.
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