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The Ay Yildiz, which will serve as the new brain of the Turkish Armed Forces, stands out not only for its sheer size but also for the materials used, technological infrastructure, green spaces and social facilities.
As the Ay Yildiz joint headquarters rises in Ankara, preparing to become the new command center of the Turkish Armed Forces, the released technical data reveals the massive scale of the project.
According to an article by Türkiye daily, the headquarters is one of the largest and most comprehensive projects ever realized in Türkiye.
The total area of the headquarters spans 12 million square meters, a size equivalent to roughly 1,680 football fields.
While a 1 million square-meter section has been completed so far, the total construction area is planned to reach 2 million square meters.
A 6.5-kilometer (4-mile) wall enclosing the campus highlights the project’s scale at first glance.
The project is three times the size of the Pentagon and four times larger than NATO Headquarters.
With these dimensions, it ranks among the largest military headquarters projects not just in Türkiye, but in the entire world.
To date, 19 million cubic meters of excavation have been carried out for the project.
Upon completion, approximately 2 million cubic meters of concrete will have been used, a volume that nearly matches the size of the Great Pyramid of Cheops.
The amount of steel to be used stands at 125,000 tons, which is roughly 22 times the amount of steel used in the Eiffel Tower.
The 10,000-square-meter YILDIZ (Star) Building, one of the landmark structures of the headquarters, was completed in just one year.
The campus also features five conference halls, each with a capacity of 3,200 people.
Meanwhile, the multi-story indoor parking garage will be capable of serving 6,400 vehicles simultaneously.
A 25-kilometer (15.5-mile) road network has been built within the headquarters and a total of 44,800 kilometers of cabling has been installed, alongside a capacity for 25,000 fiber optic cables.
This infrastructure aims to back the communication and command systems of the headquarters with a highly resilient technological foundation.
The 168,000 lighting fixtures to be used across the headquarters offer a capacity that could illuminate approximately 3,000 football fields.
The headquarters will be far more than just a structure of concrete and steel.
A total of 1 million plants and trees will be planted across the campus with 2 million square meters of green space, an area roughly one and a half times the size of Hyde Park in London.
An invisible nervous system is effectively being laid beneath the Crescent and Star.
The 44,800 kilometers of cabling to be used across the headquarters actually surpasses the Earth's circumference of roughly 40,000 kilometers, meaning it could wrap around the entire globe with room to spare.
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