Turks Pledge Use of Bases if War Erupts : Diplomacy: Baker gets assurances from President Ozal. He says Kuwaiti royal family has pledged to compensate Ankara for any economic losses from sanctions against Iraq.

Despite their reluctance to be drawn into a U.S.-directed military confrontation with Iraq, Turkish leaders on Thursday assured Secretary of State James A. Baker III that U.S. forces could use strategic Turkish bases if war breaks out, a Bush Administration official said.

In the event of full-scale hostilities, “I am confident we can count on our allies the Turks,” the official told reporters on Baker’s plane after Baker met with Turkish President Turgut Ozal and other leaders.

The official, who attended all the meetings, said Turkey has not yet lifted a limitation on North Atlantic Treaty Organization operations that applies to more than a dozen military stations jointly operated by the United States and Turkey.

“We had discussions about expanded intelligence and military cooperation,” the official said, without supplying details.

In a news conference at the airport before leaving Turkey, Baker announced that the Kuwaiti royal family has pledged to compensate Turkey for losses caused by the economic sanctions against Iraq.

There has been some concern here about the sanctions’ effect on the Turkish economy, which under President Ozal has been booming. Some economists expect this year’s growth rate to top 7%, and fear has been expressed by Ozal partisans that the sanctions would halt growth and cost Turkey $2 billion to $3 billion in trade.

The Kuwaiti emirs, whose fortune is estimated by some analysts at more than $30 billion, much of it in foreign banks, could be expected to compensate the Turks for about $300 million a year the Turks are paid in connection with two oil pipelines and an oil terminal.

Baker emphasized the longstanding defense cooperation between the United States and Turkey. But he dismissed as hypothetical questions about the use of bases in Turkey to mount operations against Iraq.

He acknowledged that Turkey declined to join the U.S.-organized multinational force being deployed in Saudi Arabia.

Iraq is sandwiched between Turkey on the north and Saudi Arabia on the south. Its neighbors to the west and east are Syria and Iran, both longtime adversaries of Iraq’s President Saddam Hussein. Only Jordan, wedged between Iraq and Israel, is trying to maintain cordial relations with Iraq.

Asked if the United States is trying to encircle Iraq with an iron ring of enemies, the official on Baker’s plane replied, “You bet.”

Assistant Secretary of State John Kelly attended Baker’s meetings in Turkey, then flew to Damascus for talks with officials of Syrian President Hafez Assad’s government. The official on Baker’s plane urged reporters to “wait and watch” the actions of Iran and Syria during the next few weeks.

In Turkey, the use of joint U.S.-Turkish bases for operations against Iraq is a very sensitive issue. For one thing, it would open up Turkey to direct attack by the Iraqis.

Baker sought to reassure Ozal that if Turkey came under attack, it would enjoy the support of all 15 of its NATO partners.

“There is no question . . . in the mind of anybody--certainly not the United States and Turkey--with respect to the obligations of Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty,” Baker said. Article 5 declares that an attack on one alliance member will be considered an attack on all.

The most important military facility in Turkey is Incirlik Air Base near Adana on the south central coast of the Mediterranean Sea, north of Syria. This big NATO-linked base, 500 miles from the Iraq border, is the site of the only full-scale U.S. tactical air operations between Italy and the Far East.

Incirlik is fully staffed with 2,400 U.S. military personnel, but it is used mainly as a training facility for the Turkish air force and U.S. warplanes on temporary missions from the NATO base in Upper Heyford, Britain. It could be reinforced on short notice by dozens of American F-15 fighters and F-111 fighter-bombers.

In an air war with Iraq, military experts say, Incirlik would be an ideal base for U.S. attack aircraft and fighters.

Retired Turkish Adm. Yilmaz Usluer, editor of a prominent military strategy publication, said: “In a war with Iraq, the main strategic objective would be the Iraqi air force and airfields. Without establishing air superiority, no other action would be successful.”

From a purely military perspective, Usluer said, the Incirlik base would provide a highly useful alternative to aircraft based in Saudi Arabia and on U.S. carriers in the Persian Gulf.

But allowing the United States to use the NATO base for exclusively U.S. military operations would create a potentially devastating political backlash in Turkey and provide more ammunition for opposition groups against Ozal and his government.

The Turkish press, which is largely critical of the Ozal government, has been quick to pick up the NATO theme.

“The gulf is outside NATO,” the leading left-wing newspaper, Cumhurriyet, commented.

“Disaster looms!” warned Hurriyet, another leading paper.

Ozal, asked about the bases by a British television journalist, responded in a way that demonstrated the sensitive nature of the subject. “Those are hard questions,” he said. “Don’t ask me hard questions.”

The official on Baker’s plane conceded that present rules preclude using the bases for offensive operations against Iraq. But he recalled that in 1986, President Ronald Reagan obtained permission to use British bases to mount the U.S. attack on Libya. The official said Turkey could, if it wished, do the same thing.

“I think the Turks see the threat that Saddam Hussein represents, and I think they see the threat that his long-range missile capacity and his chemical weapons capability presents to many nations,” the official said.

“The Turks, because they are strategically located, are . . . exposed,” he said. “If they know that the (NATO) alliance is going to be there for them and the United States is going to be there for them, they will be there for the United States.”

After his talks in Turkey, Baker flew to Brussels, where he will meet with NATO foreign ministers today.

The official said it is not realistic to expect NATO to join, as an alliance, in the multinational force in Saudi Arabia. But he said Baker wants to brief the allies on U.S. operations and seek a renewed pledge of support for Turkey.

The official said the Administration has “already changed our thinking” about a long-delayed sale of 20 F-15 warplanes to Saudi Arabia. He called on Congress to drop its objection to the sale, which has been opposed by supporters of Israel.

Also Thursday, Iraq’s ambassador to Turkey, Tarik Abdul Jabbar Jawad, criticized Turkey severely for taking part in the sanctions against his government.

Jawad, in an interview with the English-language Turkish Daily News, dismissed the sanctions as trifling. He said Iraq will weather them easily.

“In 1972,” he said, “Iraq nationalized its oil, (and) the same kind of sanctions were imposed. But after six months everyone came back to us. This is oil. We are exporting, not importing. And, now (after the invasion and annexation of Kuwait), 20% of the oil in the world is in our hands. How long can they resist us?”

The increased tension between Turkey and Iraq was evident along the 200-mile frontier between the two countries. The semiofficial Anatolia News Agency said Thursday that Iraqi troops had moved into positions along the border. It did not estimate the number of troops involved, but said that Turkey, in response, had sent an additional 1,500 soldiers to frontier posts.