In a maritime disaster that unfolded off the coast of Turkey’s largest city Istanbul early Wednesday, a Turkish cargo vessel carrying 10 Turkish crew members sank just 11 minutes after colliding with a Turkish-flagged oil and chemical tanker, Turkish maritime authorities have confirmed. The crash occurred in the busy Marmara Sea, roughly 32 kilometers south of Silivri, a western Istanbul suburb, at approximately 3:00 a.m. local time.
Officials from Turkey’s General Directorate of Maritime Affairs confirmed that rescue teams have already located the sunken cargo ship’s lifeboat and scattered floating debris from the vessel, identified as the *Tugberk Imamoglu*, but no trace of the 10 crew members — including the ship’s captain — has been found to date. “We can say that the sinking occurred rapidly in 11 minutes. No one has been found alive,” Turkish Transport Minister Abdulkadir Uraloglu told reporters, confirming all crew members hold Turkish nationality.
An emergency distress signal was successfully transmitted from the *Tugberk Imamoglu* immediately after the collision, but the first search and rescue assets only reached the remote crash site more than an hour later, at 4:10 a.m. Currently, a large-scale search operation is ongoing across the crash zone, mobilizing two military and rescue helicopters alongside 12 dedicated search and rescue vessels.
Authorities confirmed the sinking after repeated attempts to contact the *Tugberk Imamoglu* via marine radio went unanswered, and all calls to the personal mobile phones of the on-board personnel also failed to connect.
According to global shipping tracking site Marine Traffic, the 90-meter cargo ship was transporting a cargo of rolled steel, en route from Iskenderun, Turkey’s major Mediterranean port, to Eregli on the Black Sea coast. The vessel it collided with, the 91-meter tanker *Alsu*, was sailing from Kocaeli, a province just east of Istanbul, to Aliaga on Turkey’s Aegean coast when the incident occurred. All previous reports confirm the *Alsu* did not sink following the collision, though no updated information on damage to the tanker or its crew has been released.
This search operation is being conducted concurrently with another ongoing maritime search mission led by Turkish naval units: since Sunday, teams have been searching for survivors of the passenger ferry *Filo Jet*, which sank off the coast of Cyprus, leaving 8 people dead and 20 others still unaccounted for.
The Marmara Sea, positioned between the Bosphorus and Dardanelles straits, forms a critical section of the Turkish Straits — one of the world’s busiest and most strategically important shipping corridors. Each year, hundreds of thousands of commercial and cargo vessels transit the waterway, connecting the Mediterranean and Black Seas for global trade. The busy traffic has raised repeated concerns over maritime safety in the region in recent years.