ANKARA, Turkey — In Muslim Turkey, which looks West from a tough and noisy Middle East neighborhood, Saturday was a time of counterpoint: the howl of war-bound American jets and shrill official silence to mark their passage.
U.S. Air Force planes staged new strikes against northern Iraq from Turkey's Incirlik Air Base for the second day, according to Western diplomats and Turkish reporters at the base. And, for the second day, there was no official confirmation that the big NATO base near the city of Adana was being used to mount attacks.
The government of President Turgut Ozal has authorized the strikes. Its reluctance to acknowledge that they are actually occurring underlines a gap between Ozal and the majority of Turks that is approaching crisis character. For Turkey, an emerging front-line role in the war poses a blend of danger and opportunity that is profoundly divisive.
In supporting war as firmly as he did the sanctions against Iraq, Turkey's southern neighbor, Ozal is gambling against history and in defiance of his political opposition, public opinion and Turkey's fiercely nationalistic and noninterventionist armed forces.
Despite internal divisions he has fueled, the 64-year-old Ozal, who rules Turkey with autocratic elan, is at least for the moment riding high on American coattails.
"My opposition tells me I am a gambler. I am not a gambler," Ozal told a television interviewer. "I am a calculating man. I calculate everything. I am an engineer. I know mathematics and logic, and therefore, I don't think I will lose."
Ozal is calculating that the United States will force Iraq from Kuwait and in the process force President Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq. He is also betting his political life that Hussein, facing half a million U.S.-led troops to his south, will not attack Turkey's even bigger army across Iraq's northern border.
"If Iraq is logical, it will not attack Turkey. If they do, we will respond firmly . . . first in the air and then on the ground," said Ozal, who insists that Turkey will not fight unless attacked.
Ozal argues that promised American military and economic assistance, together with Turkey's enhanced international reputation and strengthened friendships with wealthy anti-Hussein Arab governments offset the domestic risks of his go-for-it policies.
