KUMBURGAZ,.
“Beginning in May 2008, Yalçın Yalman, the night security guard at the Yeni Kent Compound in Kumburgaz, on the Sea of Marmara coast west of Istanbul, began filming a series of unknown objects appearing over the water at night.”
Over a roughly four-month period, he recorded several hours of high-resolution video footage on a Sony Handycam, often with the assistance of compound residents.
The footage shows objects approaching at low altitude over the sea, hovering, and departing. Some sequences appear to show internal structure: hull, "windows," and what some viewers have interpreted as occupant figures inside. The compound's general manager and multiple residents have publicly confirmed they were present during some of the filming and witnessed the objects directly.
The footage was submitted to the SIRIUS UFO Space Sciences Research Center in Istanbul, founded by Haktan Akdoğan. SIRIUS engaged a panel of analysts including the Turkish National Council for Scientific Research's image analysis specialists. The panel concluded that the footage showed physical objects rather than digital insertions or artefacts, and that the objects' apparent dimensions and behaviour were inconsistent with any known craft. The full SIRIUS technical report is publicly archived.
Skeptical analysis of the Kumburgaz footage, including by some Turkish photographic specialists, has suggested that the apparent "occupants" may be lens artefacts or boat lights distorted by atmospheric conditions. Outside of Turkey, the case has not received the level of scrutiny that some Western cases have, and its evidentiary status outside the SIRIUS analysis remains relatively under-examined. The case is included here for the sustained, multi-night, multi-witness, high-resolution video record — a combination relatively rare in the UFO video archive.
Independent editorial summary. An unidentified report does not by itself establish an extraterrestrial origin. Map locations may be approximate.