Incirlik Air Base: One of the Most Legally Exposed Assignments Overseas
Incirlik is one of the most legally exposed assignments in the Air Force. It is a Turkish air base near Adana in southern Turkey, where American Airmen of the 39th Air Base Wing serve as tenants supporting deterrence and airpower operations, behind heavy security, on a base that Turkey owns and can close the gates on. For years families were sent home and Airmen were largely confined to base over regional threats, and accompanied tours have only started to return. It is isolated, the command is acutely sensitive to anything that could strain the relationship between Washington and Ankara, and Turkish criminal law outside the gate is not a backdrop but a live risk.
That combination, a zero tolerance command, a foreign legal system with severe penalties, and thousands of miles between you and an experienced civilian courtroom lawyer, is exactly why a serious charge here is no place to rely on isolation and the nearest available counsel. Court martial defense is all Bilecki Law Group does, and the firm tries these cases across Europe and beyond from its office in Tampa. We fly to Turkey and try the case, because what decides a contested court martial is the trial experience of the lawyer in the room, not how close he is to the gate.
The Mission That Flew From Incirlik
In the spring of 1991, with hundreds of thousands of Kurdish refugees driven into the mountains of northern Iraq and dying of cold and hunger, the airpower that went to protect them flew from Incirlik. Operation Provide Comfort put American and allied aircraft over the north to shield people who could not protect themselves while the relief effort worked on the ground, and it was launched and sustained from this base. The Airmen who flew those missions put themselves between the strong and the defenseless. That is what a real defense is, standing between you and a system that has already decided to make an example of you. That is the standard we bring to a case at Incirlik.
Why Airmen at Incirlik Bring Us In
We win court martial cases. Military defense is all we do, and Airmen fly us in from all over the world because of our trial record. The military justice system is not built to find the truth; it exists to preserve good order and discipline, and a command guarding nuclear weapons at the edge of the alliance will make an example of an Airman to prove it holds the line. A serious case is investigated by the Air Force Office of Special Investigations, and for sexual assault and other covered offenses the decision to refer charges to a court martial no longer belongs to your commander but goes to an independent Special Trial Counsel. Your Area Defense Counsel may be capable but carries a heavy caseload inside the same system, which is why Airmen serious about winning bring in their own counsel.
UCMJ Charges We Defend at Incirlik Air Base
We defend every kind of military charge. The ones below are simply the most common at Incirlik Air Base.
Sexual Assault and Sex Offenses (UCMJ Article 120 / Article 134). These allegations route to an independent Special Trial Counsel now, and the command treats a report as established before the investigation is finished, all the more so when an allegation involves a Turkish national and the command's calculation shifts toward protecting the bilateral relationship. These cases demand counsel who will run an independent investigation and contest the case rather than let the allegation stand in for proof, because a conviction means confinement, a federal record, and a place on a sex offender registry.
Domestic Violence and Assault (UCMJ Articles 128b and 128). Domestic violence under Article 128b is charged as aggressively as any offense in the UCMJ since the Office of Special Trial Counsel took these cases over. It covers a spouse, an intimate partner, or a family member, and it treats strangulation or suffocation as its own charge that the government can bring even with no visible injury. A qualifying conviction also triggers the federal Lautenberg firearms bar, which can end an Air Force career because an Airman has to be able to carry a weapon. We also defend assault under Article 128, and a confrontation off base in Turkey is among the most dangerous a service member here can face, because the command will prosecute to avoid the diplomatic fallout rather than ask whether you were defending yourself, where self defense is a recognized defense.
Larceny and Government Property (UCMJ Articles 121 and 108). Airmen here are not living off base on the local economy, so the housing allowance fraud cases common at other overseas bases mostly do not arise, and what the command reaches for instead is larceny and wrongful appropriation, pursued harder than the conduct warrants to show it is in control. The government treats missing gear or an item that cannot be reconciled as larceny under Article 121 or wrongful disposition of military property under Article 108, but a financial discrepancy is not the same as theft, and the government still has to prove the state of mind required by the charged offense: intent for larceny or fraud, or negligence where Article 108 permits it, not just that something cannot be found.
Drugs and Off Duty Conduct (UCMJ Articles 112a and 134). Drug cases often turn on the chain of custody and the government's burden to prove any use was knowing and wrongful. Turkey has among the strictest drug enforcement in the region, and possession of even a small amount off base can mean years in a Turkish prison under Turkish law, on top of whatever the UCMJ brings, and that reality hardens how the command responds to any allegation. A serious off base matter can be taken up by the Turkish police and prosecuted in a Turkish court on a separate track from your command, so get counsel involved before you talk to anyone.
A Career and a Reputation Worth Defending
We do not pretend that every Airman who calls us from Turkey is innocent. What matters is how serious the case is, not your rank. If a matter is genuinely minor, your Area Defense Counsel can handle it, and we will tell you so honestly. But when the case is serious, everything is on the line at once: your career, your retirement, your good name, and your freedom. A court martial conviction is a federal criminal conviction, and the applicable sentencing parameters tie a confinement range to the offense, two and a half to ten years for sexual assault and ten to twenty for rape, that a judge can depart from only by stating specific facts in writing, on top of any required or adjudged punitive discharge and, for a covered sex offense, sex offender registration. That is why you fight. The court’s jurisdiction and the convicted offense determine which sentencing rules apply; some offenses use separate sentencing criteria rather than these ranges.
If you are facing an investigation or court martial at Incirlik, reach out for a free defense strategy session. We will tell you exactly what you are facing and how we would defend it. The government is already building its case. The only question is whether anyone is building yours.
FAQ
OSI wants to interview me about an allegation at Incirlik. Do I have to talk to them?
No. The Office of Special Investigations interview is built to gather evidence, not to hear your side, and Article 31b of the UCMJ gives you the right to stay silent and to a lawyer before you answer anything. Incirlik adds a wrinkle most stateside bases do not, because an off base incident involving a Turkish national can draw the Turkish authorities under the agreement that governs U.S. forces here, and a statement to one system can surface in the other, so silence matters even more. Decline the interview, ask for counsel, and call a defense lawyer before you give any statement.
I was badly outnumbered in an off base confrontation in Turkey. Does self defense still apply?
Yes. Self defense is a complete defense under the UCMJ when your force was reasonable and you were not the aggressor, and being outnumbered is highly relevant to what was reasonable. The problem at Incirlik is that the command often charges first to manage the diplomatic fallout and asks questions later. Proving it takes work, the witnesses, any video, and the real sequence of who escalated and when, and we build that record rather than trust an investigation more concerned with the bilateral relationship than with what happened to you.
A drug allegation has come up at Incirlik. How is it defended?
On the same ground as anywhere, the collection process, the chain of custody, the lab work, and whether any use was knowing and wrongful, none of which a positive test alone establishes. What raises the urgency here is the host nation overlay, because off base the Turkish authorities can pursue their own prosecution under drug laws far harsher than U.S. civilian law, and even on base the command tends to treat a drug allegation as criminal rather than administrative because it cannot look soft on drugs in front of the host nation. That pressure does not change the elements the government has to prove, but it makes getting experienced counsel engaged immediately matter more than it would stateside.