The Hijacking Where Everyone Smiled: Coşkun Aral’s Surreal Scoop

Sep 13, 2025
5 min read

Collage of smiling man in sunglasses, airplane cockpit with laughing people, newspaper headline "Hijack," red and black brushstroke accents.

Picture this: you’re on a flight, the usual dull hum of the engines in the background, when suddenly a voice declares, “From now on, Islam commands the plane.” Now imagine you’re not just a passenger, but a war correspondent with a camera in your lap. What do you do? If you’re Coşkun Aral, you take one of the most bizarre sets of hijacking photos in aviation history — where both the hijacker and the pilot are smiling.

Turkey in 1980: The Context

To understand why four men seized a Boeing 727 in October 1980, you need a brief picture of what Turkey looked like at the time. The country had been through years of violent political conflict between left-wing and right-wing factions throughout the 1970s, with bombings, assassinations, and street fighting killing thousands. In September 1980, just weeks before the hijacking, the Turkish military staged a coup, suspending parliament and banning political parties. The new military government was cracking down hard on both the left and Islamist movements. The four hijackers were members of a radical Islamist group who saw the coup as exactly the kind of "military fascist regime" they wanted to fight. Their plan was to divert the plane to Iran and then Afghanistan, where the Soviet-Afghan War had recently begun and the mujahideen were actively recruiting foreign fighters.

A Flight That Took a Very Strange Turn

On 14 October 1980, Turkish Airlines flight 293, a Boeing 727 called Diyarbakır, was on its routine run from Munich to Ankara, with a stopover in Istanbul. It should have been a straightforward journey. Instead, four radical Islamist militants seized the aircraft, announcing their plan to divert it first to Iran and then on to Afghanistan to join the mujahideen.

For the passengers, the first sign that something was wrong came when the flight dragged on far longer than expected. “It was the 17:35 flight and the aircraft’s name was Diyarbakır,” Aral later recalled. “It takes 40 minutes to get to Ankara but after an hour and a half, we still weren’t there.”

When the hijackers finally made themselves known, they gave unusual instructions: women must cover their hair, if no scarf was available, a seat cover would do. “We wish no harm to anyone onboard,” they declared. “We’re fighting against the military fascist regime.”

Two men in suits in a plane cockpit. One smiles at the camera while the other focuses on controls. Dials and panels in the background.

A Reporter’s Instinct Kicks In

Among the passengers was Coşkun Aral, a Turkish war correspondent used to running toward chaos, not away from it. As the situation unfolded, he did something extraordinary. He picked up his camera and began taking photos, at first blindly, without even framing the shots.

One hijacker walked down the aisle, and Aral, true to his profession, asked if he could do an interview. Unsurprisingly, the man said no. But a little later, another hijacker approached him and ordered him to follow. It turned out to be the break of his career.

Coşkun Aral was not a passive observer by nature. Born in 1945, he was one of Turkey's most decorated photojournalists, the kind of correspondent who had covered wars in Lebanon, Iran, and Iraq and had been under fire enough times that a gunman on a plane felt, if not routine, at least familiar. He'd been heading back to Ankara after an assignment in Germany. His cameras were in the overhead locker. When the hijacking started, he made a decision that any photojournalist recognises: the job doesn't stop because you're personally involved.

Man in suit examining documents on airplane seat, open briefcase beside him. Visible aircraft door with "OPEN" text and directional arrow.

Inside the Cockpit

Aral was ushered into the cockpit where he witnessed a scene that has since passed into legend. A hijacker pointed a pistol at the pilot’s neck, grinning broadly. The pilot, instead of panicking, wore a calm smile of his own.

The hijackers even told Aral how they smuggled the gun on board. Their first idea had been to hollow out a copy of the Quran, but fearing sacrilege, they instead carved out space in an Arabic dictionary.

The mood was almost surreal. At one point, laughter broke out. The pilot reportedly joked to the gunman not to press the weapon against his neck, he might get tickled and crash the plane.

The photographs Aral snapped captured this bizarre atmosphere perfectly: men with weapons, yet smiling; a pilot in peril, yet composed. They are among the most unsettlingly human images of a hijacking ever taken.

Most hijacking photographs, when they exist at all, are taken from outside: the plane on the tarmac, negotiators at a distance, passengers descending stairs after release. Aral's photographs are something completely different. They're interior images, shot in the confined space of a cockpit, showing the texture of a hostage situation from two feet away. In that sense, they belong to the same tradition as the best war photography, the tradition that runs from Roger Fenton's Crimean War images through to Larry Burrows in Vietnam: getting close enough to show what it actually looks like, rather than what it looks like from the outside.

Four men in an aircraft cockpit, one laughing heartily. Control panels visible. Mood appears jovial. Black and white image.

The End of the Ordeal

The drama ended when the Turkish armed forces stormed the plane and subdued the hijackers. But for Aral, the ordeal didn't finish there. Mistaken for one of the militants, he was arrested and held for four days in a Turkish prison before finally being cleared.

By then, his photos had already made their way into the world. What might have been just another grim story of air piracy became a strange, almost absurd episode in history, thanks to his lens.

The four hijackers were tried by a Turkish military court. Three were sentenced to death, though the sentences were later commuted. The fourth received a lengthy prison term. Turkey in 1980 was not a country where Islamist militants received lenient treatment from a military government that had just seized power specifically to restore order. The plane, the Diyarbakır, continued flying with Turkish Airlines for several more years. Aral's Arabic dictionary detail, the gun hidden in a hollowed-out book, became one of the most retold elements of the story and influenced subsequent thinking about how weapons could be concealed in everyday objects.

Two open briefcases on a tiled floor, one filled with cash and the other with documents and a stapler. Items scattered around, high-contrast photo.

Why the Photos Still Resonate

Hijackings are normally remembered in terms of fear, violence, and tragedy. Aral's pictures show another side: the strange human moments that emerge even in crisis. The hijacker's grin, the pilot's composure, the surreal laughter in the cockpit, all captured in the space of a few clicks. It's worth comparing them to the most famous unsolved hijacking in history: D.B. Cooper's 1971 Northwest Orient hijacking, where the hijacker was never photographed at all and left no visual record beyond a composite sketch. Aral's pictures are the opposite: a hijacking fully documented by someone who happened to be both trained and willing.

For Coşkun Aral, the scoop changed his life, propelling him to international recognition. He later published the full account of the episode in his 2015 memoir Gördüğüm Dünya (The World I Saw). For the rest of us, it's a reminder that history isn't just made of grand events, but of fleeting moments, strange expressions, and the courage of someone who keeps the camera rolling when everyone else freezes.