"Love Your Neighbor as Yourself": Living Next Door to a US Military Air Base in a Small Turkish Town

Abstract

This paper analyzes the impact of Incirlik Air Base, a US military facility established in southern Turkey after World War II, on the surrounding local community. While the base's geopolitical significance has been extensively studied in the literature, its impact on local residents has been overlooked. This study addresses this gap by investigating the changes in the daily life of Incirlik residents over the course of the base's history, drawing upon archival analysis with a critical geopolitics approach. We show that the interplay between the base and the local community has fluctuated over time due to ever-changing global and regional conditions. However, the persistent and strong US military presence has ultimately established political and economic dominance over the local community, making residents dependent on and vulnerable to US military decisions. This ultimately led to negative perceptions towards the US, despite its original purpose of safeguarding the US and its allies' interests. Through this analysis, our study offers a new perspective on Incirlik residents' experiences with US militarism while also contributing to the larger discourse on the impact of foreign military bases on local communities.