Turkey Struggles to Untangle Troubles, Define Course : Politics: Citizens fear the government may be steering the nation in the wrong direction.

If all countries have their foibles, one of Turkey’s is that it does not enter decades well.

The armed forces marched to power in May of 1960, March of 1971 and September of 1980. In the tense spring of 1990, nobody is expecting a new coup, but most Turks are upset about the way their country is heading. It is directionless, some critics say.

“We don’t want tanks in 1990,” an Istanbul newspaper thundered recently.

Opinion polls indicate only about 12% support for the government at a time of political impasse, terrorist violence, alarm over human rights and increased Islamic fundamentalism in a country that has 55 million people and is officially secular.

The military is behind a Draconian crackdown in the government’s struggle against Kurdish separatists waging a guerrilla war.

Turkey’s Western European allies, wary of the political instability and relative economic backwardness here, are more anxious to integrate with their newly accessible eastern neighbors. They have rebuffed Turkey’s application to join the European Community.

Moreover, Turkey’s role as a pillar of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization--it has the alliance’s longest land border with the Soviet Union--shrinks in proportion to the diminishing Soviet threat. Indeed, the Soviets, who until recently were seen as Turkey’s greatest source of perceived danger, are becoming one of Turkey’s key trading partners.

The brunt of Turkey’s domestic disquiet this spring centers on Turgut Ozal, a dynamic 62-year-old politician who has ruled Turkey since 1983, first as prime minister and since last November as president.

Ozal’s center-right Motherland Party holds an unassailable parliamentary majority, won when he was popular, but it managed to poll only 21% of the vote in local elections last year. Turks complain about hardships imposed by inflation of about 70% and criticize Ozal’s high living and his reputation of being tolerant of corruption.

“I am not worried about my country’s future,” Alptemur Kilic, a conservative commentator who supports the government, said recently, “but I am very worried about the present.”

Riot police clash frequently with student protesters on Turkish college campuses. Cruel treatment of political prisoners and criminals in Turkish jails draws steady fire from international human rights groups. In recent months, terrorists in Ankara and Istanbul have killed a police officer, a retired army colonel, a prominent lawyer and a leading newspaper columnist and his driver.

The expansion of Islamic fundamentalist groups at schools and government ministries alarms most Turks, who support the secularism imposed by Kemal Ataturk when he founded the modern Turkish state in 1923.

The government limps along, its prestige in tatters. One Turkish newspaper sponsored a contest involving unflattering jokes about the new prime minister, Yildirim Akbulut, a country lawyer who was Ozal’s choice as his replacement.

Opposition political groups, which regularly boycott an increasingly contentious Parliament where even the ruling party is riven, demand prompt elections. They are joined by business groups that support Ozal’s free-market economic programs but think that his credibility is shot.

“If a country is laughing at its government, what can you expect?” Suleiman Demirel, a former prime minister who heads the center-right True Path Party, said in an interview. “It’s ridiculous: They have 65% in Parliament and 15% of the people. The government is worn out. Nothing can improve without elections. We lose time, we lose blood, that’s all.”

The government is not constitutionally required to call parliamentary elections before 1992, and Ozal is in no hurry to advance them, telling visitors that he is satisfied with the progress of his programs and with his support. Indeed, the Turkish economy is bouncing back from a poor 1989.

What Ozal is preoccupied with this spring is insurgency in the Kurdish-speaking southeastern region by Marxist guerrillas of the Kurdish Workers’ Party. Turkish officials say the guerrillas have the support of Syria and Iran and at least the acquiescence of Iraq.

In its sixth year, a struggle whose sporadic violence has already caused more than 2,000 deaths has recently gained momentum and support in the poor provinces where a majority of Turkey’s 8 million ethnic Kurds live.

Two weeks ago, at least partially in response to pressure from the armed forces, the government issued a stiff 13-point emergency decree that provides for internal exile and nationwide censorship on news of the guerrilla struggle.

What the government calls essential measures to safeguard national security and Turkey’s territorial integrity are denounced by opponents as a contrived attempt to recover lost popularity by stoking nationalistic fervor.

Either way, the alarm bells are ringing as Turkey lurches into a difficult new decade.