Akdepe sits on the north-western edge of Ashgabat, near the town of Bezmein, and in Soviet usage was called Ak-Tepe. English Wikipedia describes it as the main airfield of the Turkmen Air Force, and the service’s own history begins here: when the Armed Forces of Turkmenistan were established on 27 January 1992, the MiG-23 and MiG-25 interceptors at Ak-Tepe were part of an inheritance that Wikipedia puts at about 300 aircraft.

The order of battle that Wikipedia reproduces, drawn from Russian sources, gives the base three formations: the 47th Separate Mixed Aviation Squadron with An-26 and An-24 transports and Mi-24 and Mi-8 helicopters; the 107th Fighter Aviation Regiment with 38 MiG-23s and 20 MiG-25s, both types marked "not operational"; and the 1st Anti-Aircraft Missile Regiment "Turkmenbashi". None of this is confirmed by Ashgabat, which has never published an order of battle, and the list carries no date. It is best read as a snapshot of a large Soviet inventory that was kept rather than flown.

The one sizeable rebuilding programme of the 1990s ended at Ak-Tepe. According to Gordon and Dawes, as cited by Wikipedia, Turkmenistan had inherited 46 Su-25 attack aircraft stored disassembled on its territory. Under a 1999 agreement with Georgia, Tbilisi Aircraft Manufacturing refurbished 45 of them as payment for deliveries of Turkmen natural gas, and the restored aircraft were moved to Ak-Tepe. About 18 were operational there by 2004.

FlightGlobal counted 20 Su-25s with the air force in 2021, a fleet-wide figure that does not say where they are kept. Another Wikipedia list puts Su-25s with the 99th Aviation Base at Mary-2 alongside the MiG-29s, so the type may now fly from both fields; no source reached for this page gives the split. Su-25s closed the air segment of the 27 September 2026 independence parade over Ashgabat, News Central Asia reported, but the report did not name their base.

On 26 June 2008 President Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov, on a working trip to the Archabil gorge, stopped at the Akdepe military airfield, took off in a MiG-29 and flew over the capital for about 30 minutes, Izvestia reported. On landing he thanked the pilots for their skilful handling of the modern combat equipment in service. The paper set the flight in a run of presidential test drives of Iranian buses, American combine harvesters, Russian KamAZ trucks, Belarusian tractors and a Chinese locomotive.

The report did not say whether he flew in a two-seat MiG-29UB or who was at the controls; Wikipedia’s account says only that he flew over the capital in a MiG-29. The flight is still the best-known event at the base, and the rare occasion on which Turkmen state media put the air force at the centre of a story.

On 29 May 2010 the president came back to Akdepe to see two aircraft handed to the State Border Service: a manned aircraft fitted with surveillance equipment and an unmanned aerial vehicle. Kazakhstan Today reported that they were meant for round-the-clock, all-weather watch over the border against illegal crossings and drug smuggling. Neither the types nor the supplier were named, and the aircraft belonged to the border service, not the air force.

In June 2015, preparing for the fifth Asian Indoor and Martial Arts Games, the president ordered conditions created for domestic flights at Akdepe so that Ashgabat International Airport could cope with foreign guests, AviaPort reported from a Uzbek news agency; at the same meeting he reviewed proposals to strengthen the material base of the air force. The Games were held in Ashgabat from 17 to 27 September 2017, with 63 nations. Whether any airline service actually used Akdepe was not confirmed by a source reached for this page.