The United States (U.S.) has deployed F-16 fighter jets and 300 personnel to Turkey’s Incirlik Air Base in a long-awaited move that allows for speedier airstrikes against Islamic State targets in neighboring Syria.
The deployment came after Turkey agreed in July to a long standing U.S. request for use of the Incirlik base for launching airstrikes.
The U.S. began conducting strikes from Incirlik with armed drones last week, Navy Captain Jeff Davis, a Pentagon spokesman, said on August 5, while saying that operations with manned aircraft would take more time.
Launching strikes from Incirlik in Southern Turkey in some cases will reduce flight times to just minutes from the hours required from other locations in the Persian Gulf region.
Incirlik, near the Turkish city of Adana, is about 285 miles (460 kilometers) from Islamic State’s self-declared capital of Raqqa in Syria.
Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu last week said his country will open other bases for operations against Islamic State, the radical Sunni group that conquered parts of Iraq and Syria and declared a self-styled caliphate, or religious state.
The Turkish government sent its own F-16 warplanes to attack jihadist positions in Syria after a bombing in a border town and the killing of a Turkish soldier. It also hit Kurdish rebels based in Iraq who have fought for autonomy in Turkey’s southeast.
Fifty U.S. jets and refueling planes, along with 1,400 personnel, were withdrawn from Incirlik in 2003 after Turkey refused to allow American forces to attack Iraq from its territory during the war to oust Saddam Hussein. The air base, where about 1,500 U.S. military personnel are assigned, has been used since then as a logistics hub for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The U.S. and partner nations have conducted more than 5,800 airstrikes over the past year in Iraq and Syria, destroying thousands of Islamic State targets, Davis said last week.
