Konya’s place in Turkish military aviation begins before the Republic. During the War of Independence, pilots loyal to the Ankara government joined the Konya Air Station (Konya Hava İstasyonu), flying worn aircraft that had survived the First World War. In July 1922 the nationalist air branch was reorganised there as the Inspectorate of Air Forces. These details come from the Turkish Air Force’s English Wikipedia article, used here as a finding aid.

The modern base is the 3rd Main Jet Base Command (3’üncü Ana Jet Üs Komutanlığı), on the Anatolian plateau about 18 km from Konya city. The date the jet base itself was established could not be confirmed from an official source and is left open. What is certain is that the airfield has been shared with civil traffic since 2000, when the State Airports Authority (DHMİ) opened Konya Airport (ICAO LTAN, IATA KYA) as a joint civil and military aerodrome.

DHMİ gives the airport position as 37°58’50” N, 32°33’45” E. Civil traffic is modest beside the military activity: Wikipedia, citing DHMİ statistics, gives 970,227 passengers and 7,136 aircraft movements for 2025, with a peak of about 1.16 million passengers in 2018. Runway data from the Turkish AIP could not be read, because the aerodrome sections are behind a subscription.

Today the base hosts four Turkish flying units: 131 Squadron with the Boeing 737 AEW&C, 132 Squadron with F-16s, the Turkish Stars display squadron and 135 Squadron for search and rescue with Cougar and UH-1H helicopters and CN-235s. In the Phantom era, Konya’s 131 and 132 Squadrons flew F-4Es, according to The Unit Report; F-16.net, however, records 132 Squadron as disbanded in 1990 and re-formed in 1992, so the Phantom years at Konya are not precisely dated here.

Anatolian Eagle grew out of Turkish experience at the US Red Flag exercise at Nellis. The first edition ran from 18 to 29 June 2001 at Konya with Turkey, Israel and the United States taking part. Milavia’s report on the 2016 edition quotes its stated purpose: “to reduce the loss of pilots and aircraft caused by unexperience and to increase the interoperability among air forces.”

The training area is large. Milavia gives it as 50,000 square miles of surface and up to 50,000 feet, equipped with threat systems that allow what it calls a full-scale exercise similar to Red Flag and Maple Flag. Between 2001 and 2016 the exercise hosted more than 2,600 aircraft from 14 countries and NATO, flying about 22,870 sorties. By 2019, Defence Turkey counted 41 terms, 15 countries and about 24,000 sorties.

The guest list has followed Turkish diplomacy. Israel flew in early editions, but three days before the international phase of AE-09/3 in October 2009, Turkey postponed it, and Israel, Italy and the United States stayed away. In April 2012 the Turkish Navy took part for the first time, and in September and October 2010 Chinese Su-27s trained at Konya alongside Turkish F-4Es, although Turkey did not count that as an Anatolian Eagle edition.

After the 2016 edition (30 May to 10 June, with Italy, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, the Netherlands and NATO) the series paused; it returned in 2019, when the US sent six F-15Es, Pakistan six JF-17s and Jordan three F-16s. The 2020 edition was cancelled for COVID-19. The 2025 edition, from 23 June to 4 July, brought US F-16s, Qatari Typhoons, Azerbaijani Su-25s, Hungarian Gripens, Saudi F-15s and, according to DefenceTurk, Akıncı and ANKA-S drones.

Turkey signed for four Boeing 737 airborne early warning and control aircraft on 23 July 2003, in a contract worth more than $1.6 billion, according to Hürriyet Daily News. Turkish industry had a large share: Turkish Aerospace Industries, Havelsan, Aselsan, Mikes and Turkish Airlines. Wikipedia dates the contract to November 2006; the Turkish press date of 2003 is used here, and the difference is noted.

The first Peace Eagle reached Konya on 31 January 2014, about six years late. President Abdullah Gül and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan attended the delivery ceremony at the 3rd Main Jet Base on 21 February 2014. Turkey reportedly sought about $600 million in delay penalties; Defence Minister İsmet Yılmaz said Boeing should pay only for delays that were the company’s fault, and officials disputed that any amount had been agreed.

Deliveries then came quickly. The second aircraft arrived in May 2014 at what Boeing called the fleet’s main operating base, the third on 4 September 2014 and the fourth on 9 December 2015. The four are named after the points of the compass: Kuzey, Güney, Doğu and Batı. Published radar range figures differ, 600 km in the 2014 delivery report and 500 km in a 2016 report, so both are given.

In July 2016 Güney flew its first mission abroad, 23 hours of surveillance over the NATO summit in Warsaw, refuelled by a Turkish tanker from İncirlik. The type has since been a fixture at Anatolian Eagle, and in January 2018 fighter jets from the 3rd Main Jet Base joined the opening strikes of Operation Olive Branch in Syria.

The Turkish Stars (Türk Yıldızları) were born inside 132 Squadron at Konya. Approval for an aerobatic team at the 3rd Main Jet Base came on 11 September 1992 and the order to form a four-ship NF-5 team followed on 7 November 1992. Training began on 25 December 1992; the first display was on 18 June 1993 at Ankara. The team later became its own squadron; Hürriyet Daily News and Wikipedia call it 134 Squadron, Kokpitteyiz 133.

The team now has seven single-seat NF-5A 2000s and six two-seat NF-5B 2000s and is one of few teams worldwide that displays with supersonic jets. Its record crowd was more than a million people in Baku on 24 August 2001. The TAI Hürjet is planned as its next aircraft. On 8 September 2016 Major Esra Özatay, who had flown as number four, took command, the first woman to command a squadron in the Turkish Air Force.

Flying low-level formation aerobatics has a cost, and it has been paid at Konya. Daily Sabah reported in 2022 that both fatal crashes in the team’s history happened in Konya province; Wikipedia dates them to 13 March 2012 and 7 April 2021. Two further NF-5s were lost near the base in 2022 and 2024 without the pilot being killed, but the 2024 crash killed a sergeant on the ground.

SoloTürk, the F-16C solo display, belongs to 132 Squadron. It began at Akıncı, first displayed in public on 15 April 2011 for the air force’s centenary, and moved to Konya in October 2016 after the coup attempt led to Akıncı’s closure as a fighter base. It claims to be the first team to fly the Cobra manoeuvre in an F-16, on 21 May 2022.

NATO’s E-3A Component at Geilenkirchen maintains three forward operating bases: Konya, Aktion in Greece and Trapani in Italy. NATO says its first AWACS flight for the Global Coalition against ISIS took place on 20 October 2016, operating from Konya, and the support was paused in May 2022. NATO’s own air command reports that between 10 November and 17 December 2021 alone, two E-3As and 65 personnel flew from Konya.

The forward base mattered earlier too. When Turkey invoked Article 4 before the 2003 Iraq war, NATO sent AWACS aircraft to Konya, where they flew from 26 February to 3 May 2003, according to Wikipedia’s account of Operation Display Deterrence, which cites a NATO fact sheet. Patriot batteries went to Diyarbakır and Batman, not to Konya.

Allied crews at Konya became a political issue in 2017. After Turkey refused German MPs access to İncirlik and Germany moved its Tornados to Jordan, Ankara also refused a Bundestag visit to Konya on 14 July 2017, where about two dozen German servicemen flew NATO AWACS. The visit went ahead on 8 September 2017 only under NATO auspices, led by Deputy Secretary General Rose Gottemoeller, with seven MPs and no press.

Air defence has followed. In June 2026 Hürriyet Daily News reported that an Italian SAMP/T surface-to-air missile system would deploy to Konya, bringing the number of NATO-linked air defence elements in Türkiye to four, alongside Patriots at İncirlik and Malatya. The Anatolian Falcon exercise of March 2012, with 15 F-16s of the US 480th Fighter Squadron from Spangdahlem, shows how routinely allies use the base.

Konya was not a centre of the 15 July 2016 coup attempt, which was run from Akıncı near Ankara, but the purge that followed reached it. In October 2016 police detained 47 soldiers in an operation focused on the Konya base, 29 of whom were remanded in custody; a week later, on 27 October, prosecutors issued warrants for 71 lieutenants and two colonels in a further operation focused on the base and spread across 17 provinces. By then more than 300 pilots had been dismissed or arrested nationwide.

The Konya training area has also claimed aircrew from other bases. On 5 March 2015 an upgraded F-4E from Eskişehir crashed in Konya province less than an hour after take-off, killing both pilots, Mustafa Tanış and Mustafa Delikanlı. Defence Minister İsmet Yılmaz said the air staff judged it pilot error, not a technical fault. With two RF-4Es lost at Malatya in February, the crash led to the withdrawal of the RF-4E fleet on 12 March 2015.

The pattern is familiar at any tactics base: intensive low flying, visiting aircraft and display training concentrate risk. The investigation results of the 2021 and 2024 Turkish Stars crashes were not found published; the Ministry of National Defence announced investigations in each case, and they are described here only as far as officials and the press reported them.