No 2nd Front Against Iraq, Turkey Says : Military: President Ozal calls the idea ‘fantasy’ that Turkey would attack from the north to assist U.S. troops from the south.

President Turgut Ozal said he has ruled out the idea of a Turkish “second front” against northern Iraq that might relieve U.S. and allied forces if they attack on the south to free Iraqi-occupied Kuwait.

“This second-front question is pure fantasy,” Ozal told reporters over the weekend in a statement that Turkey’s state radio and television underlined by making it their lead news item.

The Turkish leader, one of the strongest pillars of the alliance against Baghdad, staked out his position ahead of scheduled talks Wednesday with Secretary of State James A. Baker III, who is on a seven-nation tour of U.S. allies to discuss the Persian Gulf crisis.

But Ozal did not rule out future Turkish military involvement, merely saying that “no such proposition has been received” and adding that, in his view, the Iraqi army is a much overrated force.

The official position of Turkey has been that it will participate in military action against Iraq only if the action is specifically authorized by the U.N. Security Council.

Just as Turkey’s strictly maintained economic embargo against its neighbor has been a major asset to the anti-Iraq alliance, so Turkey’s 750,000-member armed forces, NATO’s biggest in Europe, could play a vital role.

About 100,000 Turkish soldiers are currently reported in the Iraqi border area. Nearly all are defensively deployed, facing a similar number of Iraqi troops. But European diplomats say Washington would like Turkey to do more.

Turkish officials have already given Baker private assurances that in the event of war, they will look positively at requests to use their nation’s big North Atlantic Treaty Organization air bases near the Iraqi border, Western diplomats say.

But Ozal’s statement implying that Turkey would not join a ground offensive put him back in the mainstream of Turkey’s military-bureaucratic Establishment, which had been growing worried about the way he has been single-handedly negotiating Turkey’s fate.

Foreign Minister Ali Bozer quit last month in a move widely viewed as reflecting his ministry’s distress at being sidelined in handling the gulf crisis.

And the Turkish military, still a major political force in Turkey, has no intention of joining any extra-territorial adventures and is not even trained to undertake major offensives, according to Necdet Oztorun, the former army chief.

“The few things that most Turks agree on is that Turkey should not get further involved,” said Sami Kohen, foreign affairs commentator with the liberal daily Milliyet. “But I don’t rule out the possibility that in all these talks, he (Ozal) might accept some kind of a Turkish commitment.”