The fire was first reported at around 3:27 a.m. on 21 January 2025 at the Grand Kartal Hotel, which was hosting 238 guests, though several survivors and witnesses smelled smoke and saw flames as early as an hour prior at 2:30 a.m.The fire began in the hotel's kitchen/restaurant section on the fourth floor, before spreading upwards.The newspaper reported that the fire started due to hot oil on the grill catching fire during breakfast preparations. It was also claimed that the flames spread after the wrong intervention of the kitchen staff by pouring water.Another media outlet, citing an unofficial expert report, suggested that the fire originated from a wiring fault in the grill, however the findings were based solely on surveillance footage, with no evidence collected from kitchen staff. The fire's spread was reportedly exacerbated by the hotel's wooden exterior

According to witnesses, no fire-detection system or fire alarms activated, leaving panicked guests attempting to escape via pitch-black smoke-filled corridors.A survivor complained that the hotel lacked any fire safety measures, such as smoke detectors or fire stairs. The Bolu engineers' and architects' union attributed the rapid spread of the fire to a lack of automatic sprinklers, which were mandatory and were to be installed in 2008 but were still absent, and the head of the Ankara Chamber of Architects reported from the site that there were no functioning emergency exit lights.