Turkish Tanker-Cargo Ship Collision Off Silivri Sinks Dry Cargo Vessel, 10 Crew Missing as Search Continues in Sea of Marmara

A Turkish-flagged tanker collided with a Turkish-flagged dry cargo ship approximately 18 nautical miles south of Silivri in the Sea of Marmara at around 3 a.m. local time on September 2, leaving 10 crew members missing and feared dead after the cargo vessel sank. The tanker Alsu, traveling from Kocaeli to Aliaga, struck the dry cargo vessel Tugberk Imamoglu, which was en route from Iskenderun to Karadeniz Eregli, within the traffic separation scheme. No visible damage was detected on the Alsu, but contact could not be established with the Tugberk Imamoglu or its 10-person crew following the collision. The discovery of life-saving equipment from the vessel floating on the sea surface and the complete absence of any response from the ship led authorities to assess that the Tugberk Imamoglu had sunk. Turkish prosecutors moved quickly following the early-morning collision, and the Maritime Executive reported that nine of the ten crewmembers from the tanker Alsu were detained as part of the investigation. The incident marks one of the most serious maritime casualties in Turkish waters in 2026. The Istanbul Provincial Directorate coordinated search and rescue operations in the hours following the collision. The crash occurred in a designated traffic separation zone designed specifically to prevent such incidents in the heavily transited Sea of Marmara, which connects the Black Sea to the Mediterranean via the Bosphorus and Dardanelles straits and handles significant commercial shipping traffic daily.