The Taliban statement went on to claim that those captured worked for the military, although there was no indication that any of those captured were military contractors or troops. The Taliban typically make false claims.

The Turkish deputy prime minister, Bulent Arinc, went on national television Monday night to emphasize the government’s efforts to get its citizens back.

The kidnapping has put the Turkish government, which has carved a niche for itself running crisis diplomacy between the West and the Muslim world, in the unusual position of needing emergency mediation itself. The semiofficial Anatolia news agency said the government had reached out to local Afghan officials, including the chairman of the Logar provincial council.

“The Foreign Ministry is involved in a serious follow-up, and we hope that our citizens will be freed soon and return to their work locations in safety,” Mr. Arinc said.

The Turkish military has occupied a special position in the international coalition fighting here. It has nearly 1,000 troops and has run two provincial reconstruction teams, one in violent Wardak Province and the other in the north in Jowzjan.

The Turks’ prominent role in civilian development and their Muslim faith may alter somewhat how the Taliban deal with them. Just three weeks ago, the Taliban, after lengthy, quiet negotiations by the Turkish government, handed over unharmed a Turkish engineer who had been abducted two years earlier, according to a statement by Zabiullah Mujahid, the Taliban spokesman for the north and east.

For Russia, the helicopter kidnapping was a rare case of recent tensions with the Taliban. After the departure of the former Soviet Union’s troops from the country in 1989 after a brutal 10-year war, the Russians generally kept their distance from Afghanistan. When Russia began to rebuild its Afghan ties shortly after the fall of the Taliban, it kept a concertedly low profile, concentrating on civilian and development projects that mostly kept its citizens out of harm’s way.