Key Ally From Start, Turkey Settles In for Long Siege : Mideast: The NATO member, hard hit economically, keeps up pressure on Iraq.

A pivotal American ally from the opening round of the Persian Gulf crisis, Turkey is settling in for a long siege, exerting tough economic, military and psychological pressure on neighboring Iraq.

So far this week, Turkey has welcomed nearly two dozen U.S. F-16 interceptors to an air base in the south that is already crowded with American ordnance, and it has extended by a year the expiring leases on more than a dozen American bases and listening posts on Turkish soil.

Next week, President Turgut Ozal will fly to Washington for lunch with President Bush; the two have been in touch by phone regularly since Iraq invaded Kuwait on Aug. 2 and have agreed on virtually everything. Now both want to keep unremitting pressure on Iraq’s President Saddam Hussein.

In Washington, Ozal will seek short-term U.S. economic concessions and, for the longer term, increased military aid.

Ozal says that siding with the United States is a matter of principle for which Turkey expects no direct pay-back. But as Washington knows, and is grateful for, in confronting Iraq, Turkey has abandoned a neutralist role in Middle East affairs that had been a pillar of Turkish foreign policy since the collapse of the Ottoman Empire after World War I.

In a region where racial hatred runs deep, it is a truism that Turks and Arabs dislike one another.

“We ruled these Arab countries for 400 years, and they don’t look at the Turks as friends,” Yilmar Usluer, a retired admiral and editor of M5 Strategic Magazine, said in a recent interview. “But we cannot stay isolated. Turkey took sides; it had to take sides. If there is a fire in your neighbor’s house, you are affected.”

Overnight, Turkey has taken center stage in the Middle East. Without Turkish support, economic sanctions against Iraq could not succeed. The closure of pipelines that carried about half of Iraq’s oil to world markets and the rupture of commerce--along with a decline in tourism and other losses, including $1 billion in exports--will cost Turkey around $5 billion a year, Central Bank governor Rusdu Saracoglu estimates.

All this will mean a spurt in inflation and a 20% decline in growth in 1990--to a still-robust 8%--but it is a bill that must be paid, in the official Turkish view. Twice so far, Turkey has rebuffed official Iraqi overtures--promises of cheap oil--to ease the pressure. A shipload of Argentine beef consigned to Iraq marks time in a Turkish warehouse. Suspicious Bulgarian cargo flights bound for Baghdad are denied overflight rights by Turkey.

Without Turkish military pressure, Hussein would have as many as 100,000 additional troops available against the U.S.-led multinational force in Saudi Arabia. With Turkey neutral in the eight-year Iran-Iraq war, Hussein did not defend his border with the Turks.

As part of the global response to the invasion of Kuwait, though, Turkey swiftly reinforced its forces on the Iraqi border, with up to 85,000 men by one estimate. Now, military sources say, there are up to nine Iraqi divisions--about 100,000 men, or nearly 10% of Hussein’s armed strength--in defensive positions on the Turkish frontier.

“Turkey has destroyed any military benefit of Saddam Hussein’s accord with Iran,” said Seyfi Tashan, director of the Foreign Policy Institute, a private think tank.

In addition, the air base at Incirlik, near Adana in southern Turkey, normally home for about 9,200 U.S. service personnel and their dependents, bristles with newly arrived firepower. Usually, there are no U.S. warplanes based at Incirlik; they are rotated in and out for training. Now, though, there are 14 U.S. F-111 fighter-bombers from England at the base.

This week, they and four F-16 fighters there since last month for training were joined by 20 F-16s from Torrejon Air Base outside Madrid, according to a spokeswoman at the base. No one expects the F-16s to return any time soon.

For his part, Ozal ramrodded a war powers bill through the Turkish Parliament earlier this month. It allows the dispatch of Turkish troops abroad and the stationing of foreign troops in Turkey. There is no expectation that Turkey will send troops to join the allied force in Saudi Arabia, but a senior Turkish diplomat described the war powers act as a psychological maneuver by Ozal to keep Saddam Hussein off-balance. The diplomat thinks sanctions rather than war are the best means of forcing Iraq to withdraw from Kuwait.

Ozal, who believes Turkey’s future lies with the West and has applied for membership in the European Community, is by all accounts enjoying himself.

“He is clearly liking what he is doing,” one Turkish official said.

Opponents complain that Ozal displays the same one-man high-handedness in handling the gulf crisis that he uses to run the country, but public opinion is with him. Turkey, an Islamic but secular and democratic country of 56 million people situated between East and West, finds itself not seeking friends but being sought out and praised.

Not only does Ozal talk with Bush; his ministers deal with the Iraqis, and also with the Iranians, providing a conduit to the West. If Turkey is enjoying this unaccustomed regional role, it may be a sign of things to come.

That, Turkish officials say, will mean upgrading the large but dated Turkish armed forces, which are getting $500 million in U.S. military aid this year.

Ozal may raise the military aid issue with Bush, but it would be at the risk of alarming the strong Greek lobby on Capitol Hill. U.S. military aid to Turkey and Greece, both members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization but constantly at odds over the Aegean Sea and divided Cyprus, is currently apportioned at a ratio of 10 to 7.

The United States, the European Community, Japan and the oil-rich gulf states have all promised to compensate Turkey, Egypt and Jordan for their losses in implementing sanctions.