US nuclear weapons in Turkey

Turkey hosts an estimated 20 US B61 gravity bombs at Incirlik Air Base near Adana, the largest single stockpile of US nuclear weapons abroad after the European drawdown. Unlike the other sharing states, Turkey currently maintains no certified national dual-capable aircraft: delivery would fall to US aircraft deployed to the base, making the arrangement closer to forward storage than to classic nuclear sharing.

The weapons' security has periodically drawn scrutiny — most sharply during the 2016 coup attempt, when Incirlik's power was cut and its Turkish commander arrested — and successive analyses have debated relocating them. Ankara participates in NATO's Nuclear Planning Group; its exclusion from the F-35 program in 2019 removed the obvious path back to a national delivery role.

Turkey is a non-nuclear-weapon state under the NPT. Senior Turkish statements have occasionally questioned why Turkey should not have weapons of its own, though no program exists; the country operates its first civil nuclear plant at Akkuyu, built by Rosatom.

Exclusion from the F-35 left Incirlik a storage site without a national delivery wing, and Ankara's talks on rejoining the program ran through 2025-2026 without resolution. Senior statements periodically question the nuclear status quo, but no weapons program exists; the Akkuyu plant, built and fueled by Rosatom, started up as the country's first nuclear power source.