The United States has previously used armed drones to conduct airstrikes from Incirlik and for months, had been requesting the use of the base to target the Islamic State.
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The operation began at 19:50 local time.
Such access should shorten flight times for U.S. (and presumably allied) fighter jets – especially into Syria, where the group calling itself the Islamic State has its de facto capital in Raqqa – compared with taking off from bases in Iraq or aircraft carriers in the Persian Gulf.
It said that the decision to push the Islamic State out of the proposed safe zone was not “the free choice of the fighting factions; in fact, its first goal is the national security of Turkey”.
Using the Incirlik base outside the city of Adana in southern Turkey drastically cuts the distance needed for the US jets to fly to northern Syria compared with other launch bases further afield in the Middle East.
This is the major change of plan by the country to fight against the IS fighters over the borders.
Turkey and the United States are arranging joint military activity to clear IS aggressors from a region of Syria close to the Turkish outskirt.
“The numbers are increasing and lessons are being learnt from past experiences”, the Turkish official said, adding numbers were nearly double the initial intake of 54 rebels.
The broader U.S. rules of engagement, approved July 31, came after rebels fighting Islamic State were attacked by the al-Nusrah Front, an al-Qaeda offshoot, in northern Syria, a second U.S. defense official said on condition of anonymity to discuss private deliberations.
Ankara hopes the zone will be safe enough to accommodate at least some of the 1.8 million Syrian refugees in Turkey.
After prolonged skirmishing Sunday, and amid the thundering booms of U.S.-led coalition airstrikes, IS extremists captured the village of Ma’arat Umm Hawsh, according to the Syrian Observatory.
“The viability of any such zone, whether “safe” or ‘ISIL-free, ‘ depends on the capacity of the ground forces in place”, said Charles Lister, a Mideast analyst with the Brookings Doha Center, a think tank.
The Turkish Foreign Ministry, in a vaguely written statement on Tuesday, said no manned or unmanned coalition aircraft that struck targets near Atimah took off from İncirlik or any Turkish air base.
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The Nusra Front said it would maintain frontlines with IS in other areas including Hama province and the Qalamoun mountain range at the border with Lebanon. The group said it was doing so in protest of the buffer zone plan.
