page_title: Incirlik Air Base
section_title: First Gulf War, Humanitarian Relief, and Operation Northern Watch
hierarchical_section_title: Incirlik Air Base / History / First Gulf War, Humanitarian Relief, and Operation Northern Watch
caption_attribution_description: English: Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld greets a U.S. Air Force staff sergeant serving with Combined Task Force Northern Watch at Incirlik Air Base, Turkey. Rumsfeld stopped at Incirlik on June 4, 2001, to receive detailed briefings from the Task Force Co-commander Brig. Gen. Edward "Buster" Ellis and his staff and to visit with service personnel of the U.S., Turkey, and the United Kingdom who make possible the patrols of the no-fly zone in northern Iraq.
context_page_description: Incirlik Air Base is a Turkish air base of slightly more than 3320 ac, located in the İncirlik quarter of the city of Adana, Turkey. The base is within an urban area of 1.7 million people, 10 km east of the city core, and 32 km inland from the Mediterranean Sea. The United States Air Force and the Turkish Air Force are the primary users of the air base, although it is at times also used by the Royal Air Force and the Royal Saudi Air Force. The base is also the home of the 74th Anti-aircraft Artillery Regiment of the Spanish Army.
  Incirlik Air Base is the home of the 10th Air Wing of the 2nd Air Force Command of the Turkish Air Force. Other wings of this command are located in Merzifon, Malatya/Erhaç and Diyarbakır.
  Incirlik Air Base has a U.S. Air Force complement of about five thousand airmen, with several hundred airmen from the Royal Air Force and Turkish Air Force also present, as of late 2002. The primary unit stationed at Incirlik Air Base is the 39th Air Base Wing of the U.S. Air Force. Incirlik Air Base has one 3,048 m-long runway, located among about 57 hardened aircraft shelters. Tactical nuclear weapons are stored at the base. Among them are "up to" 50 B61 nuclear bombs.
context_section_description: After Iraq's 1990 invasion of neighboring Kuwait, the 7440th Composite Wing (Provisional) assumed operational control of the 39th Tactical Group. The 7440th was the air component of Joint Task Force Proven Force, which eventually controlled 140 aircraft and opened a northern front, forcing Iraq to split its defenses between the north and the south, where the main thrust of coalition attacks originated as part of Operation "Desert Storm". Following the war, Incirlik hosted "Combined Task Force Provide Comfort", which oversaw Operation Provide Comfort (OPC), the effort to provide humanitarian relief to millions of Kurdish refugees in northern Iraq.
  Between 1992 and 1997 Vickers VC10s from No. 101 Squadron RAF were based here for Operation Warden over Iraq.
  The 39th TACG was redesignated the 39th Wing on 1 October 1993 and restructured as a standard Air Force objective wing.
  The U.S. State Department's "Operation Quick Transit" evacuated thousands of Kurds from northern Iraq late in 1996. The wing provided logistical support in Turkey to this operation, which signaled the end of the humanitarian aspect of Operation Provide Comfort (OPC). OPC ended 31 December 1996, and Operation Northern Watch (ONW) took its place 1 January 1997 with the task to enforce the U.N.-sanctioned no-fly zone north of the 36th parallel in Iraq.
  The 39th Air and Space Expeditionary Wing was activated at Incirlik AB on 15 September 1997, to support and command USAF assets deployed to Incirlik supporting ONW, while Incirlik's tent city, Hodja Village, became the USAF's largest such "temporary" facility.
  From 1994, the Turkish Air Force began receiving KC-135R-CRAG Stratotanker aerial refueling tankers. The seven aircraft are operated by the 101st Squadron, stationed at Incirlik.
caption: Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld during his visit to Incirlik Air Base, 4 June 2001
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