Military flying at Balıkesir began in the Second World War. According to Anadolu Agency (April 2024), the base was founded on 22 July 1942, when the 1st Reconnaissance Company of the 5th Aircraft Regiment moved in from Çorlu in Thrace. The agency says the unit was raised to brigade level in 1951 and, after the T-33 trainer entered the inventory, became the first jet base; it received its present name, the 9th Main Jet Base Command (9’uncu Ana Jet Üs Komutanlığı), in 1953.

The same agency’s 2013 feature tells the story from the jet end and gives 1951 as the founding year. In 1950 the air force decided to acquire jet aircraft, and on 15 October 1950 eight pilots were sent to the United States for jet training. They returned on 31 August 1951, T-33s were based at Balıkesir, and on 29 March 1952 eight F-84G Thunderjets, Turkey’s first jet fighters, arrived. The two dates are not in conflict so much as measuring different things: 1942 for the airfield unit, 1951 for the jet base.

F-16.net adds an earlier layer that the Anadolu accounts do not mention. It records 191 and 192 Filo as activated at Balıkesir in 1947, the first with V-11 aircraft and the second with Hawker Hurricane Mk IICs, both converting to P-47D Thunderbolts in 1948 and 1949 and taking their three-digit numbers in 1951. These are specialist-site records and have not been confirmed from an official Turkish source.

The senior squadron at Balıkesir is 191 Filo, call sign Kobra. Its lineage is recorded differently by Anadolu Agency and by F-16.net, and the page publishes both. In the agency’s 2013 account the squadron was formed as the 41st Aircraft Company (41. Tayyare Bölüğü) at Kütahya and moved in turn to Merzifon, Eskişehir and Mürted before arriving at Balıkesir in 1967. It converted to the F-86 in 1956, taking the call sign Kuğu (Swan), and to the F-104 in 1964, when it became Kobra. It was renamed 191st Squadron Command in 1973 and received F-16C/Ds in 1994.

F-16.net instead has the squadron activated at Balıkesir in 1947, flying F-84Gs from 1952, F-84Fs from 1963, F-104G and F-104S Starfighters from 1969 to 1980, and F-16s from 1990. The differences are real: the arrival date at Balıkesir (1947 or 1967), the Starfighter date (1964 or 1969) and the F-16 conversion (1990 or 1994). The Anadolu figures carry the Turkish military’s own framing and are used as the primary account here; neither version has been checked against an official unit history.

The most recent chapter is recorded only by F-16.net: the squadron was disbanded after the coup attempt of 15 July 2016, its aircraft passing to 151 Filo, and reactivated in 2021, with its return confirmed by participation in Anatolian Eagle 2022. Anadolu Agency’s April 2024 report shows 191 Filo in service, flying alert and counter-terrorism missions. F-16.net lists the squadron on Block 50 aircraft in the multirole, suppression of enemy air defences and strike roles.

The second squadron, 192 Filo "Kaplan" (Tiger), has a history that runs through almost every Western fighter Turkey has flown. F-16.net lists Hurricanes in 1947, P-47Ds from 1948, F-84Gs from 1952, F-84Fs from 1961, F-5As from 1970, F-104S Starfighters from 1976 and F-104Gs from 1988, before conversion to F-16C/Ds of Blocks 40 and 50 in 1992. None of these dates has been checked against an official unit history.

Balıkesir’s F-16s have flown NATO operations abroad. According to F-16.net, 192 Filo deployed to Ghedi in northern Italy for the whole of 1994 for Operation Deny Flight over Bosnia and Herzegovina, and again from 22 December 1996 to 31 December 1997 for Operation Deliberate Guard in support of SFOR. 191 Filo followed to Ghedi from 23 March to 10 June 1999 for Operation Allied Force against Serbia, the campaign Anadolu Agency calls the Kosovo operation.

The squadron’s status is disputed in the sources. English Wikipedia marks 192 Filo as disbanded; F-16.net lists it as active and records its appearance at the 2023 NATO Tiger Meet, where it won the Best Uniform award, and its aircraft at Teknofest in 2025. The later dates make F-16.net the more current source, but no official Turkish statement on the squadron’s status was found, and it is treated here as active but unconfirmed.

Balıkesir’s second role is teaching. Turkish Air Force pilots learn to fly at Çiğli near İzmir, working through the SF-260D, KT-1T and T-38M; those selected for fighters then come to Balıkesir. Anadolu Agency’s April 2024 report, published for World Pilots’ Day, describes 193 Filo, the Öncel (Pioneer) squadron, running an intensive course of about eight months that turns jet-qualified graduates into F-16 pilots, while 191 Filo flies the operational alert.

193 Filo is the newest squadron on the base. F-16.net says it took over the traditions of 153 Filo in July 2018, and lists Block 30 and Block 50 F-16C/Ds. The base commander in April 2024 was Major General Cihangir Kemal Yüzçelik, who marked World Pilots’ Day with the squadrons, according to the agency.

Anadolu Agency’s 2013 feature gives a picture of the pilots who come out of the pipeline. It profiled First Lieutenant Faruk Mantı, then a 191 Filo pilot with three years on the F-16 and more than two years at Balıkesir, who had logged about 700 flying hours, 450 of them on the F-16. In the training system of that time, the agency noted, fighter pilots prepared on the F-5 at Konya before moving to the F-16. Mantı said he had become a pilot because of a poster he saw at secondary school, and called the F-16 the most beautiful aircraft in the world.

Anadolu Agency gives the 9th Main Jet Base a wide area of responsibility: the western Black Sea, Thrace, the Marmara and the Aegean. Its 2024 report calls it the fortress of Western Anatolia (Batı Anadolu’nun kalesi). The base is one of two fighter bases in Balıkesir province; the other is Bandırma on the Sea of Marmara. Hürriyet Daily News wrote in 2009 that Balıkesir "is a hub for Turkish jets, which often engage with Greek warplanes in the disputed air space above the Aegean Sea"; the Turkish and Greek governments hold opposing official positions on that airspace.

The alert role is visible in the news. On 4 September 2016, according to Hürriyet Daily News, two F-16s took off from Balıkesir to identify a Bell 430 helicopter belonging to the businessman Ali Ağaoğlu, which had left Avşa Island without being identified by air traffic control; later reports put the problem down to poor radio reception at low level. On 25 February 2026 a pair of F-16s scrambled after an unidentified radar track on the Bulgarian border, and one of them crashed, killing its pilot.

The base’s most serious loss in the Aegean came on 8 October 1996, when a two-seat F-16 that had taken off from Balıkesir for training crashed near Chios after an encounter with Greek Mirage 2000s, killing Captain Nail Erdoğan. The Turkish position, in a 2016 indictment reported by Hürriyet Daily News, is that a Greek pilot shot the aircraft down; the incident was originally recorded as a dogfight and accident, and the Greek Foreign Ministry later offered help with the search. No official Greek account of the engagement was found in the sources read, so the Turkish claim is reported as a claim.

The runway is shared with civil aviation. The State Airports Authority lists Balıkesir Merkez Airport (ICAO LTBF, IATA BZI) as a civil and military aerodrome, in service for civil traffic since 1998, with a 6,500 square metre terminal and domestic flights only. Its technical page gives one runway, 18L/36R, 2,990 m by 45 m in asphalt, and an elevation of 340 ft; the left and right designators suggest a parallel military runway that DHMİ does not list.

DHMİ places the airport 4 km from the city centre at 39°37’10” N, 27°55’34” E. The same technical page shows the military character of the ground layout: several aprons and a taxiway are concrete rated at PCN 110, far stronger than the 6,500 square metre civil terminal needs, and the airport is classed in fire category 6. The independent OurAirports database, used only as a cross-check, lists the aerodrome as Balıkesir Airport and notes that it is also known as Balıkesir Air Base or Balıkesir Central.

The 2016 coup attempt reached Balıkesir. Writing in Hürriyet Daily News, Sedat Ergin listed the Balıkesir base among those, with Akıncı, Erkilet, İncirlik and Denizli-Çardak, that were under the control of the coup plotters on the night of 15 July and not obeying the orders of the Combined Air Operations Centre in Eskişehir. In November 2016 police detained pilots in eight provinces, Balıkesir among them, over alleged links to the Gülen movement, which Ankara blames for the attempt. The official record of what happened at the base that night was not found and is not reconstructed here.