Incirlik Air Base / 37°00’N 35°26’E
Close Down Incirlik
Incirlik Air Base or so-called 39Th Air Base Wing is located in southern Turkey near the Syrian border. Te base is 950 km far from Baghdad, 1.450 km from Tehran and 2.000 km from Strait of Hormuz. It’s biggest and oldest foreign base of Turkey.
Incirlik Air Base is located about 7.5 miles east of Adana. Adana, with a population of over six million, is the fourth largest city in Turkey, and is the heart of a rich agricultural region. Approximately one and one-half hour’s drives to the west are beautiful Mediterranean beaches. The Adana environs are rich in historical sites. According to the “US Nuclear Weapons in Europe” report of Hans M.Kristensen from Natural Resours Defence Council, dated February 2005,US maintain 480 B 61 type nuclear weapons in NATO bases in Europe. 90 of NATO nuclear weapons are at İncirlik Air Base. They are in Turkey since 1997 and 1998.
The mission of the 39Th Wing is to help protect US and NATO interest in the Southern Region. In 39Th Wings there is no permanent US Air Force aircraft. It provides facilities and support for five key areas:
1. Wartime and contingency operations,
2. Training deployments and regional exercises,
3. Maintenance and storage of US munitions in a high state of readiness,
4. Communications for National Command Authority tasking,
5. Hub support for 21 tenant units, four operating locations and two geographically separated units throughout Turkey and surrounding countries.
In the base lives nearly 1,400 US Air Force military members, more than 670 US and Turkish civilian employees, more than 2,000 family members, nearly 900 Turkish maintenance contractors, and approximately 1,700 people deployed to support ONW.
The construction of Incirlik began in the spring of 1951. Turkey entered the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in 1952.
The United States Air Force (USAF) initially planned to use the base as an emergency staging and recovery site for medium and heavy bombers The years to follow would prove the value of Incirlik’s location not only in countering the Soviet threat, but also in responding to crises in the Middle East.
Incirlik launched exactly 100 strike packages or gorillas; flew over 4,600 combat sorties, totalling 14,000 combat hours; dropped over 3,000 tons of ordnance on enemy targets; and pumped nearly 30 million pounds of fuel during Gulf War.
In early 2004 Incirlik had a new role as a temporary “terminal” for U.S. soldiers travelling home after serving about a year in Iraq.
The Global Peace and Justice Coalition (BAK) as a national anti-war campaign in Turkey continues to defend the peace and the life.
1. 1 March 2003, forced the Turkish parliament to vote against the government’s attempt to allow US forces to use Turkish soil for the attack on Iraq.
2. In June 2004, organised the ‘DO NOT COME, BUSH!’ campaign against the NATO summit in Istanbul and Bush’s participation at it.
3. In January 2004 and 2005, BAK organised the international “A World Without War is Possible” conferences in Istanbul.
4. Since April 2005, BAK launched the ‘CLOSE DOWN INCIRLIK MILITARY BASE’ campaign.
5.BAK brings a suit against a secret Cabinet Decree of 18 April 2005 allows the Incirlik base to be used by “friendly and allied nations” for “logistical purposes”, including the “transport of military materials and personnel.
6. BAK on 30 November 2005 organised a press conference about the death and torture flights of CIA and its using Turkish airspace, İncirlik base and Sabiha Gökçen airport
8. BAK continues a campaign to disrupt an American pre-emptive strike on Iran: “ US out of Iraq, hands off Iran”.
9. BAK have continued the compaign “Stop Israel” since 12 July 2006, the invasion day of Lebanon from Israeli army.
10. A group of 15 young people from different cities of Turkey organized a bike tour from the door of İncirlik Air Base on August 2006. They organizeted an anti-nuclear, anti military bases bike ride across Turkey. They protested US expansions policies, military domination over country. They called their route as “Ride to Peace”.
Campaigns will continue because the choice is simple: a world in which everybody is threatened by weapons, or nobody is.