Merzifon, the most populous district of Amasya, lies on the southern slope of Tavşan Mountain at the edge of the plain that bears its name. Its position on the Ankara-Samsun road makes it one of the crossing points between Central Anatolia and the Black Sea. Its long settlement history, reaching back from the Hittites to Byzantium, turned into a dense town life in the Ottoman period; at the beginning of the sixteenth century Merzifon was a district (kaza) of the sanjak of Amasya within the province of Sivas, and with the proclamation of the Republic it was attached to the province of Amasya. In the twentieth century this broad, flat land gave the town a second identity: Merzifon became one of the stopping points of Turkish military aviation in Anatolia.

Aviation activity in the district begins in 1935-1936 and continues without interruption to the present, though through many changes of name, command and mission. The story is not easy to tell, because the Air Force's own publications treat the history of the airfield and the history of the base under separate headings. The present form of the base command rests on orders of 1956 and 1961, while the first flights are some twenty years older.

The General Framework of Turkish Aviation

The foundation of the Ottoman air force was laid with the Aircraft Commission (Tayyare Komisyonu), established on 1 June 1911. The successive Tripolitanian, Balkan and First World Wars did not allow lasting progress in this field. During the War of Independence the Ankara Government set up, on 13 June 1920, an Air Force Branch attached to the Department of War and a number of aircraft companies, and opened an Air School in Eskişehir. The branch was renamed the General Directorate of Air Forces (Kuva-yı Havaiye Müdüriyeti Umumiyesi) in 1921, and an Inspectorate of Air Forces was created in 1922. After the founding of the Republic, in 1925 the Aircraft Society (Tayyare Cemiyeti, today the Turkish Aeronautical Association) began work to make aviation popular among the public, to build a national air industry and to supply the air force with aircraft and personnel. Atatürk's attitude in these years is seen in a sentence published in 1935: "Just as the Turk walks and roams the mountains, forests, plains, seas and every corner of the homeland with knowledge and self-confidence, he must be able to roam the skies of the homeland in the same way."

The organization changed quickly over the same years. In 1928 an Air Undersecretariat was established within the Ministry of National Defence and the air station commands were converted into battalions. Units at company level were raised to battalion level in 1928 and to regiment level in 1932, air brigades were formed in 1939, and the first air division was created in 1943. On 23 January 1944 the Air Force Command became an independent service command. These steps need to be kept in mind in order to follow developments in Merzifon, because the names and affiliations of the units in the district changed each time according to these larger reorganizations.

The First Flights and the Air Gunnery School

The first flights in Merzifon took place in 1935-1936 on the flat ground near the old Merzifon Military Hospital, by the Air Gunnery School (Hava Atış Okulu), which formed part of the Eskişehir Air School and was stationed in Merzifon. Flying began when nine of the sixteen Letov S-16T "Smolik" aircraft obtained from Czechoslovakia, as a result of friendly relations and cooperation with the Balkan and Eastern European countries, were sent to Merzifon. When the Lysanders arrived in 1940 the airfield was moved to its present site and the 103rd Reconnaissance Group was formed; the Smoliks passed to the command of the Training Battalion of the 1st Aircraft Regiment in Eskişehir.

The structure of the units changed often in these years. On 12 June 1939, by order of the General Staff, the school in Merzifon was placed under the General Staff's movement control as the Gunnery and Bombing School. By an order of 8 November of the same year the school was given the name Air School; when its 1st and 4th Aircraft Companies moved to Istanbul, the War Academies Training Battalion was formed. The 1st Aircraft Company of the Eskişehir Air School Training Battalion and the 3rd Company of the Merzifon Air School were also turned into a Reconnaissance Unit. The Lysanders that arrived in 1940 were sent to Adana in 1943 and the Hurricanes took their place. In the gunnery training course opened in 1941, pilots sent from their units received fifteen days of gunnery training.

The attitude of the townspeople also deserves attention in this picture. From the day it was opened, the Merzifon branch of the Aircraft Society organized talks and lectures explaining the link between the air force and the defence of the homeland, Air Martyrs' Day was observed every year, and young people staged performances whose proceeds were donated to the society. According to a visitor from Amasya, the hall was so full that there was no room to drop a pin; the programme began with a Hüseynî musical suite and continued with gymnastic displays and Ziya Gökalp's play Alparslan. Even so, while the centre of Amasya and Gümüşhacıköy each took part in the donated-aircraft campaign of the Atatürk period by giving an aircraft, Merzifon did not.

Merzifon in the Second World War

At the beginning of the Second World War the Turkish Air Force had reached 487 aircraft, 298 combat and 189 trainers, and was regarded as the strongest air power in the Balkans. With the outbreak of the war the 7th Aircraft Regiment was formed in Merzifon, and dirt runways began to be converted into concrete ones. On 19 June 1942 an Air School Depot Directorate and a Mobile Workshop Directorate were added to the Merzifon Air School; on 7 July 1942 the school was split in two, as the Air School in Malatya and the Air Mechanics School in Diyarbakır. The 3rd Reconnaissance Company stayed in Merzifon, temporarily attached to the 4th Aircraft Regiment, and then went to Adana by an order of 30 December 1942.

The decisive step in Merzifon's aviation history was taken in 1942, after the concrete runway was completed. The 4th Aircraft Regiment, founded in Kütahya on 1 June 1937 and stationed in Çorlu until 1941, moved first to Eskişehir and then to Merzifon on 26-27 July 1942. One battalion of the regiment was equipped with PZLs, the other with Hawk and Morane aircraft. Because the PZLs were old, the journey did not go smoothly: aircraft made forced landings near İskilip, Çorum and Gümüşhacıköy, and only 24 of the 27 aircraft reached Merzifon. The Air Gunnery School, which had worked within the Air School until 1942, served alongside the regiment for one more year and moved to Adana in 1943. In the same year, on 15 September, the photography teams of the Eskişehir and Merzifon air schools were disbanded. On 28 September 1942 the 4th Training Company of the Merzifon Air School was placed under the Air War Academy, which had moved from Istanbul to Ankara, and helped the academy's instructors complete their flying; on 6 October 1942 the Merzifon Air Depot, attached to the Kayseri Air Supply Centre, was ordered moved to Havza.

Turkey's need for a modern fighter was met at the end of 1942 by the British-built Hawker Hurricane Mk.IIC. The first three aircraft were received on the eve of the new year; between the first delivery and the end of August 1943 a total of 47 aircraft arrived, and two groups of fourteen aircraft each were assigned to two companies of the 1st Battalion of the 4th Aircraft Regiment in Merzifon. These aircraft were given serial numbers 2736-2782 and remained in service until they were replaced by Spitfires in 1947. When the fronts shifted to the Balkans and the Turkish border, the regiment moved on 4 July 1944, one battalion to Etimesgut and the other to Esenboğa, to defend the air space of Ankara and Kırıkkale; after the Republic Day flypast it returned to Merzifon on 4 November 1944. In 1945 two companies of the 5th Aircraft Regiment were assigned to Merzifon and the depleted aircraft numbers were made up with Spitfire Mk.Vs. Under this arrangement the Fw 190 A3 and the Spitfire Mk.V, which had flown against each other as enemies on the European fronts, were now flying in formation within the same air force. According to a record of 13 March 1945, the 4th Aircraft Regiment in Merzifon had one Dragon liaison aircraft, 24 Hurricane IIC, 22 Hurricane IIB, four Falcons and two Henriot-182 trainers.

From Regiment to Base After the War

On 4 April 1947 a new organization was introduced, and a Third Air Division based in Erzincan was added to the divisions based in Eskişehir and İzmir. The 4th Aircraft Regiment in Merzifon had by then given up its Hurricanes and moved to a four-company Spitfire Mk.IX structure. The Spitfires were soon replaced in turn by American P-47Ds; the 5th Regiment made this change in 1948 and the 8th Regiment in 1949, while the 7th Air Regiment in Merzifon was disbanded in March 1950. In these years Turkey was drawing closer to the Western bloc through the Truman Doctrine and Marshall aid, and in 1951 the Air Force adopted the American organization. Regiments became "bases" and flying battalions became "squadrons," and on 17 December 1951 the first jet aircraft entered the inventory, two T-33As brought to Yeşilköy.

With the reorganization of 31 March 1951 the 4th Aircraft Regiment in Merzifon took the name 4th Air Base Command. The Spitfires were organized into the 141st and 142nd Squadrons of 25 aircraft each, and served as Turkey's only air defence fighter until they were replaced by F-86E jets in November 1954. Work on air defence radar was under way in the same years: site selection that began in 1949 took concrete form in 1951 with an SCR-615 set up beside the base gate, and an AN/CPS-1B radar was then placed on a hilltop on Tavşan Mountain about 17 kilometres northwest of the district. The installation began operating the same year as the National Control and Reporting Centre.

It cannot be said that the base progressed along an unbroken line. In 1953, when the Merzifon airfield had to be renewed in line with the NATO-standard infrastructure programme, the 4th Air Base Command moved to Eskişehir together with its two squadrons. Sources give different years for this move, such as 1953 or 1954-1955; what is certain is that the base was brought back to Merzifon as the 44th Flying Group Command by an order of the Air Force Command dated 11 September 1956. The 142nd Squadron, modernized with F-86 aircraft, and the newly formed 143rd Squadron settled in Merzifon with this return. A memoirist recalls the period this way: Merzifon had become active in 1956 with F-86s coming from Eskişehir, established not as a base but as a flying group command; there was no house to rent in the district, and bachelor officers shared whatever houses they could find, three or four to a house, while those who could not find one slept in barracks left over from the airfield construction.

The Korean War and the Pilots of Merzifon

In 1950 Turkey sent troops to Korea to contribute to international peace. Of the two pilots who served on behalf of the Air Force in the first Turkish brigade, one was Captain Nusret Erdem, who was acting company commander in the 2nd Aircraft Battalion of the 4th Aircraft Regiment in Merzifon, and the other was First Lieutenant Muzaffer Erdönmez. Erdönmez was assigned to the 452nd Wing of the 729th Bomb Squadron and took part in attacks flying B-26 Invaders in the same squadron as American pilots. According to the account, on 21 April 1951 he set out with a six-aircraft formation on a mission to destroy a bridge near the Yalu River. Anti-aircraft fire was met over the target and Erdönmez's aircraft was hit; although his formation mates warned him to bail out, he turned his aircraft toward the bridge and destroyed the target with his ordnance. Recorded as the first and only Turkish airman to fall in Korea, Erdönmez was 28 years old and lies in the United Nations Memorial Cemetery in Pusan. With this contribution Turkey is remembered as the eighth country to provide air support in Korea. His name is also written "Ersönmez" in some sources.

The 5th Air Base Command and the Jet Era

By orders of the General Staff of 1 November and of the Air Force Command of 14 November 1961, the 44th Group Command in Merzifon, made up of the 142nd and 143rd Squadrons, took the name 5th Air Base Command and moved to the base organization; the present 5th Main Jet Base Command rests on this order of 14 November 1961. The standard given to the 5th Regiment in Bursa on 15 December 1949 was kept for about ten years in Eskişehir and Diyarbakır after the unit was disbanded; on 8 June 1962 it was handed to the new base command by the Air Force Commander, Lieutenant General İrfan Tansel, on behalf of President Cemal Gürsel. The aircraft and personnel of the 5th Aircraft Regiment, founded in Bursa in February 1943 and disbanded on 15 June 1952, had also come to Merzifon; for this reason the present command is regarded, in terms of historical continuity, as the successor of the 5th Aircraft Regiment.

Here a real problem of chronology arises. The Air Force's own history speaks of two separate 5th Air Base Commands, one before Merzifon and one after. Whether units established a second time under the same name continue the earlier one has not always been settled by documents; the interpretation accepted today for Merzifon is that the base is a continuation of the 5th Aircraft Regiment.

The fleet was also renewed according to the technology of the time. From 1965 the Turkish Air Force received 75 F-5A, 20 RF-5A and 13 F-5B aircraft under the Military Assistance Program (MAP) and distributed them, and Merzifon was one of the distribution points. The 141st Squadron was modernized with F-5s in 1967 and the 143rd in 1968, aircraft that stood out for low cost, easy maintenance and flexibility. In 1971 the names of many squadrons changed, and the 142nd and 143rd Squadrons in Merzifon became the 151st and 152nd. In Merzifon the F-86 Sabre was used between 1956 and 1968 and the F-5 Freedom Fighter between 1967 and 1997.

The squadrons in Merzifon also took part in the 1974 Cyprus Peace Operation. The 152nd Squadron moved in July first to Yenişehir and then, at half strength, to Antalya; the 151st Squadron joined the operation with its F-5s, deploying to the Çiğli and Akhisar airfields. For this contribution the 5th Main Jet Base Command was awarded the Armed Forces Medal of Highest Courage and Self-Sacrifice (gold) by the General Staff on 15 November 1983. During the operation some passenger aircraft of Turkish Airlines were also placed at the state's disposal, stationed at Ankara Esenboğa and Merzifon, and used for carrying supplies with their seats removed.

Merzifon entered the F-16 age in 1997. The first aircraft to take off from the base on 2 May 1997 was Turkey's first flying F-16C Block 50 and the Turkish Air Force's first SEAD (suppression of enemy air defences) aircraft. After Merzifon gave its F-5s to Konya in 1997, the 152nd Squadron became the first F-16 user. With the renaming of 1999 this squadron took the name 151st SEAD Squadron Command; the other F-16 squadron, whose modernization was completed in October 1999, was opened a second time on 19 October 1999 under the name 152nd Squadron, with the Air Force Commander, General Ergin Celasin, in attendance. The period 1997-1999 has gone into the record as the period in which the 151st Squadron worked under the name 152nd Squadron. In 1999 the base's squadrons were also assigned to support NATO's air operations in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo. In 2002 three Cougar helicopters entered the inventory and two UH-1Hs were withdrawn; the Search and Rescue Detachment was also made a unit directly attached to the Operations Command in 2003. On 25 December 2016, as part of the restructuring of the Air Force, the organizational link of the 141st Jet Squadron and the 143rd Advanced Squadron was made to the 5th Main Jet Base Command, and the title of the 143rd Advanced Squadron was changed to 153rd Squadron.

Aerobatic Teams

Aerobatics in the Turkish Air Force goes back to 1914, but team displays with jet squadrons began in the 1950s. Of the six aerobatic teams listed in the sources, those most closely tied to Merzifon are the fourth team, the Bats (Yarasalar), and the sixth team, formed in 1971. The "Flying Swans" (Uçan Kuğular, 1955-1965), founded in 1955, had flown F-86E Sabres. The "Bats," founded in 1964 and again flying F-86s, came into being while Necati Artan was serving in Merzifon: the team of nine aircraft was for a time arranged as a formation of twelve, and after one display it went back to the nine-aircraft section. The team flew displays in formations of five, nine and twelve, its colour scheme was changed from red-white to black-white, and it stopped operating two years later. The sixth team, formed in Merzifon in 1971 solely for the ceremony marking the 900th anniversary of the Victory of Malazgirt, used F-5A Freedom Fighter aircraft.

Necati Artan describes his posting to Merzifon in his memoirs. When he finished flying at the Eskişehir Air School, Merzifon came up in the draw; because his family lived in Bursa he offered two months' salary to a friend who had drawn Bursa, but could not persuade him. In those years it was impossible to go from Bursa to Merzifon by road, especially in winter; the route ran by train to Istanbul, from there to Havza, and then by bus to Merzifon. During his days in Istanbul he learned that the first jet aircraft had been landed at Yeşilköy by ship, and went to see the T-33 in its container. He writes that in Merzifon the thick British flying suits kept him from feeling the aircraft. He also recounts that to fly one more sortie he climbed in through the window of the training room and rubbed out, on the wall chart, a square pencilled in for an aerobatic flight, that his knees trembled with fear that night, and that he never did it again.

Cengiz Topel's Years in Merzifon

The best remembered of those who served at Merzifon Air Base is Air Pilot Captain Cengiz Topel, who fell in the 1964 Cyprus air operation. After flight training in Canada he began his duty in Merzifon on 6 January 1958, posted to the 143rd Squadron Command of the 44th Flying Group Command. Like the other officers, he had trouble finding a house; he then rented a house on Gözlek Street and lived there with his friends Sebahattin Çelik, Nejat Sezenler and Selahattin Yılmaz, and after a time brought his mother, Mebuse Hanım, to live with him. In those years, when social facilities were limited, the airmen formed a football team in their time off from flying. One of the regular players of the team, called Hava Gücü (Air Power), was Topel, and according to the memoirs its biggest rival was Amasyaspor; Amasyaspor scored at least three or four goals in every match, and the airmen would talk until the next game about "how could that goal have been let in."

When Topel completed his three years of service in 1961 he asked to be posted to Ankara or Eskişehir and was assigned to the 112th Squadron of the 1st Main Jet Base Command. His days in Merzifon thus came to an end. In 1964, during a warning flight by the Turkish Air Force over Cyprus, his aircraft was hit; he bailed out, was captured by the Greek Cypriots unhurt, and died under torture. His body was handed over on 12 August 1964 at the insistent request of Turkish officials and buried on 14 August 1964 at the Edirnekapı Sakızağacı Air Martyrs' Cemetery. It was first announced that he had died in hospital; the autopsy report and witness accounts that followed established that he died as a result of torture.

Another detail showing Merzifon's relation to aviation is that the district has a cemetery known as an "Air Martyrs' Cemetery." There are nine cemeteries in Turkey that bear this name: Afyon, Erzincan, Eskişehir, İzmir, Kayseri, Muş, Edirnekapı Sakızağacı in Istanbul, Zile Asri Cemetery in Tokat, and Merzifon.

Merzifon Airport and Civil Aviation

The principles for opening military airfields to civil air transport were set by a protocol signed between the General Staff and the Ministry of Transport on 16 November 1986. Under Civil Aviation Law No. 2920, 40 airfields and heliports belonging to the Turkish Armed Forces were opened to use by civil aviation operators; Merzifon was among them. Civil facilities were added to the military airport in the Air Force inventory, and Amasya Merzifon Airport entered service on 20 June 2008. Operated by the State Airports Authority (DHMI), the airport is 6 kilometres from Merzifon, 45 from Amasya and 63 from Çorum.

Aircraft Flown at the Airfield

The aircraft used at the Merzifon airfield and by its units reflect, on a small scale, the machine history of Turkish aviation. In order, they were the PZL XXIV in 1938-1940, the Martin 139 WT in 1939-1941, the Focke Wulf FW-58 in 1939-1942, the Curtiss Falcon CW22 R in 1938-1940, the Westland Lysander and the Hawker Hurricane in 1941-1942, the Spitfire Mk.V in 1944-1945, the Focke Wulf FW-190/A-3 in 1943-1946, the Supermarine Spitfire Mk.IX in 1947-1953, the P-47D Thunderbolt in 1948-1952, the Beechcraft AT-11 in 1953-1983, the F-86 Sabre in 1956-1968, the T-33 Shooting Star in 1959-1997, the F-5 Freedom Fighter in 1967-1997 and the F-16 Fighting Falcon from 1997 to the present. From 2002 UH-1H and AS-532 Cougar helicopters were added to the inventory. The spelling of the aircraft names is left as it appears in the published unit history.

The State of the Sources

Most publications on Merzifon Air Base come from the Air Force's own history offices, and civilian researchers cannot reach the archives of these offices. For this reason even an academic article on the subject has been unable to reach the archive documents and has had to rely on books and theses based on those archives. Dates therefore sometimes fail to agree: 1953, 1954 or 1955 may be given for the same event, and the deployment of the 151st Squadron to Cyprus is given in different months in different sources. Where such contradictions arise, dates of orders, which have the character of documents, have been preferred as far as possible. The same article points out that Turkey has no aviation museum in which military and civil aviation are displayed as a whole, and proposes the establishment of an Aviation and Technology Park in Merzifon.

Chronology

1935-1936: The first flights in Merzifon were made with Letov S-16T Smolik aircraft at the Air Gunnery School.

1940: The Lysanders arrived, the airfield moved to its present site, and the 103rd Reconnaissance Group was formed.

1942: After the concrete runway, the 4th Aircraft Regiment moved to Merzifon on 26-27 July; the first Hurricane Mk.IICs were received at year's end.

1943: The Air Gunnery School moved to Adana.

1944: The 4th Aircraft Regiment was sent temporarily to Etimesgut and Esenboğa for the air defence of Ankara and returned on 4 November.

1947: The Hurricanes were replaced by Spitfires.

1951: On 31 March the regiment became the 4th Air Base Command; the 141st and 142nd Squadrons were formed; the radar on Tavşan Mountain began operating.

1953-1956: The base moved to Eskişehir to adapt the airfield to NATO infrastructure; by an order of 11 September 1956 it returned to Merzifon as the 44th Flying Group.

1961: The 5th Air Base Command was established by the orders of 1 and 14 November.

1962: On 8 June the standard remaining from the 5th Regiment in Bursa was given to the base command.

1964: Necati Artan formed the Bats aerobatic team with F-86s; Cengiz Topel fell in Cyprus.

1967-1968: The 141st and 143rd Squadrons converted to the F-5.

1974: The Merzifon squadrons took part in the Cyprus Peace Operation.

1983: On 15 November the base command was awarded the Armed Forces Medal of Highest Courage and Self-Sacrifice (gold).

1986: On 16 November a protocol on civil use of military airfields was signed.

1997: On 2 May the first F-16C Block 50 took off from Merzifon.

2008: Amasya Merzifon Airport opened on 20 June.

Bibliography

Primary sources

  • 5. Ana Jet Üs Komutanlığı Tarihçesi, 1939-2009 (2009), Amasya: Hava Basımevi Neşriyat Müdürlüğü.

Academic studies

  • Taşdemir, Serap (2025), "Türk Havacılık Tarihinde Merzifon", Belgi Dergisi, No. 29, pp. 217-238. (https://dergipark.org.tr/tr/pub/belgi/article/1499316)
  • Kurt, Emin (2011), Türkiye'de Jet Üslerinin Kuruluşu ve Gelişimi (1951-2010), Ankara University Institute of Turkish Revolution History, master's thesis.

Other sources

  • Kurt, Emin (2009), Kıbrıs Şehidi Hv. Plt. Yzb. Cengiz Topel ve 1964 Kıbrıs Hava Harekatı, Air Force Command, Ankara.
  • Havacılık Tarihinde Türkler 3-4 (2005), Air Force Command History Branch, Ankara.
  • Öz, Mehmet (2002), "Merzifon", TDV İslam Ansiklopedisi, vol. 29, pp. 243-245.

Online sources