Loaded F-16 taking off to prevent the presidential plane

When staff pilot captains İlker Hazinedar and Oğuz Alper Emrah were assigned on a flight mission, it was nearly midnight. They did not know the flight routes and targets. Akıncı Air Base Operations Commander Staff Col. Ahmet Özçetin had said, "You take off, the information will come while you're in the air."

But previously, in the evening hours, they were both told that the mission would be directed for an air target and not a target on land.

On the evening of July 15, 2016, the flight order arrived to them at around 11 p.m. "By the time we had conducted the checks on the plane and made it ready for takeoff, it was past 00:00; afterwards, we took off. Bombs were not loaded at the bottom of the planes, there were only rockets on the airfoils," said Hazinedar in his testimony to the prosecutor's office. 

And Emrah said, "I and Capt. Hazinedar took an F-16 jet each. On each of the F-16s, there were two AIM-9 and AIM-120 ammunition."

In the radio records happening right after the takeoff, the following dialogue took place at 00:17 between Staff Maj. Ahmet Tosun, commanding the operation from air from the 141st Squadron, and Emrah, who flew with the "Şahin 2" call sign:

FİLO (Tosun): The plane we'll tell you will probably be the presidential aircraft, a huge plane, one with the emblem of the presidency. 

ŞAHİN 2 (Emrah): Understood.

And later an instruction came from the squadron.

Emrah explained the aftermath as follows: "We went in that direction for about 200 miles. I believe that it corresponded to the Polatlı - Afyon direction. After a while, an instruction came from the radio to come back."

From this instruction, we understand that the assignment of averting the presidential aircraft...