Saudi Arabia is deploying combat planes to Turkey to fight ISIS

Royal Saudi Air Force aircraft will launch air strikes against Daesh from Turkey.

RSAF aircraft are being deployed to Incirlik airbase, Turkey, from where they will launch air strikes against ISIS, Turkey’s Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğluy said on Feb. 13.

Saudi Arabia has been part of the US-led coalition fighting Daesh since 2014; by moving its combat planes closer to the area of operations it will be able to increase the ops tempo.

Image credit: Antonio Muñiz Zaragüeta

It’s not clear how many RSAF aircraft will be deployed, what type of aircraft the Saudi will deploy nor when these will arrive. So far, Saudi officials have performed a site survey, the Turkish foreign minister siad.

Saudi Arabia is not the only country moving its aircraft to Turkey: according to some media reports, Qatar and UAE (both already belonging to the anti-ISIS coalition and launching their sorties from Jordan) will station their warplanes in Turkish airbases, including Diyarbakir, in the southeastern region of the country.

Image credit: Alessandro Fucito

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David Cenciotti is a journalist based in Rome, Italy. He is the Founder and Editor of “The Aviationist”, one of the world’s most famous and read military aviation blogs. Since 1996, he has written for major worldwide magazines, including Air Forces Monthly, Combat Aircraft, and many others, covering aviation, defense, war, industry, intelligence, crime and cyberwar. He has reported from the U.S., Europe, Australia and Syria, and flown several combat planes with different air forces. He is a former 2nd Lt. of the Italian Air Force, a private pilot and a graduate in Computer Engineering. He has written five books and contributed to many more ones.