(The Turkish Post) – Eleven people were killed and 27 injured when a tour bus and a truck collided on a motorway in Manisa province in western Türkiye at around 11:11 a.m. on Sunday, Oct. 11, the Manisa governor’s office said.
The Manisa bus crash happened near the Akhisar toll plaza on the Gebze-Orhangazi-Izmir Motorway as the bus traveled from Bursa toward Izmir. The bus driver was detained, and prosecutors opened an investigation into the cause.
Manisa bus crash leaves 11 dead
The tour bus and a truck carrying timber collided in the Izmir-bound lanes near the Akhisar toll booths, and the bus overturned. Eleven people died at the scene.
Ambulances took the injured to hospitals. Health Minister Kemal Memişoğlu said one of the 27 injured was in critical condition, 18 were in moderate condition and eight were in good condition.
The identities of the dead and the exact number of passengers on the bus had not been officially released by Sunday afternoon.
Emergency teams and ministers respond
Interior Minister Mustafa Çiftçi said teams from the Disaster and Emergency Management Authority (AFAD), police, the gendarmerie, firefighters and emergency medical services were sent to the scene and that the government was monitoring the response closely.
Manisa Governor Vahdettin Özkan visited the crash site. He said the investigation was continuing under the chief public prosecutor’s office and urged drivers to follow traffic rules.
Akhisar prosecutors investigate the cause of the crash
Justice Minister Akın Gürlek said the Akhisar Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office had opened a criminal investigation into the Manisa bus crash and assigned three prosecutors to it.
The bus driver was taken into custody after the collision. Officials have not given a cause for the crash, and gendarmerie traffic units were examining the scene on Sunday.
Road deaths in Türkiye
Road crashes killed 6,035 people in Türkiye in 2025, down from 6,351 in 2024, according to the Turkish Statistical Institute (TÜİK). Of those, 2,541 died at the scene and 3,494 died after being taken to hospital, within 30 days of a crash.
The institute recorded 1,549,574 road accidents in 2025, of which 288,321 caused death or injury. A total of 403,937 people were injured, and an average of 16.5 people died on the roads every day.
Drivers accounted for 50.7% of those killed in 2025, passengers for 29.3% and pedestrians for 20%, according to the institute, which published the 2025 figures in May 2026.
The number of road deaths per 100,000 motor vehicles fell to 18.0 in 2025 from 20.3 a year earlier, while the number of injured rose by 4.9%. Ankara recorded the most road deaths of any province, with 290.
Earlier bus crashes on Turkish highways
The death toll in the Manisa bus crash equals that of a crash on Aug. 9, 2024, when an intercity bus hit an overpass pillar near Polatlı in Ankara province, killing 11 people, including the driver. Ankara Governor Vasip Şahin said at the time that there were no brake marks at the scene, and an expert report prepared for prosecutors later found the driver primarily at fault.
In October 2024, six people were killed when a tour bus carrying passengers from Balıkesir to the Cappadocia region veered off the road and overturned on the Aksaray-Ankara highway in central Türkiye, local officials said.
The Gebze-Orhangazi-Izmir Motorway links the Istanbul region with Izmir, Türkiye’s third-largest city, and crosses the Gulf of Izmit on the Osmangazi Bridge, a suspension bridge with a main span of 1,550 meters. The motorway, about 426 kilometers long including its connecting roads, was fully opened in 2019. Akhisar, a district of Manisa province, lies on its route south toward Izmir.
