Turkey Warned by Iraq Over U.S. Attacks

Threatening retaliation, Iraq on Wednesday accused Turkey of unprovoked aggression in allowing U.S. warplanes to attack Iraqi targets from the Incirlik Air Base on the outskirts of this southern city.

There was no immediate response from a Turkish government that has been reluctant to acknowledge the raids from Incirlik, which have given allied forces a second front in the air war against Iraq.

A letter from Iraqi Foreign Minister Tarik Aziz to his Turkish counterpart accused Turkey of “shameful” and “aggressive conduct . . . unprecedented in the history” of the two neighbors.

“It has become certain to us and to the world that U.S. military aircraft have used the Turkish base of Incirlik to raid targets within Iraqi borders,” Aziz said in his letter to Turkish Foreign Minister Kurtcebe Alptemocin. “Thus, Turkish territory has been used with the approval of the Turkish government to commit aggression against Iraq. . . .

“Your government . . . is held fully responsible for this unjustified aggressive conduct. . . . I am certain that you are well aware of the consequences of such behavior,” Aziz wrote.

Turkish President Turgut Ozal, a firm supporter of the U.S. lead in the gulf crisis, engineered parliamentary approval of the use of the big Turkish-U.S. base. Ozal says Turkey will not fight Iraq unless attacked, but his critics charge that the use of Incirlik is inexorably drawing Turkey toward war on the ground along the heavily fortified, 200-mile Turkish-Iraqi frontier. Ozal replies that Saddam Hussein has too much else on his plate to attack Turkey.

Incirlik, which entered the war last Friday, is base to a powerful strike force of 24 F-15 interceptors, 10 F-4G fighters, 38 F-16 and 18 F-111 fighter-bombers, along with 6 EF-111 bombers. Support aircraft range from AWACS command planes to KC-135 tankers and intelligence planes.

The Incirlik jets launched their heaviest raids of the war Wednesday, dispatching a 54-plane strike in the morning, and 61 planes in an afternoon raid, according to reporters who counted them. On Wednesday night, the American jets flew out once again from Incirlik.

In a belated admission Wednesday of what had become Turkey’s greatest non-secret, a Foreign Ministry spokesman in Ankara acknowledged that Incirlik, 460 miles west of Iraq’s northern border, is as integral a part of the war as bases in Saudi Arabia or American aircraft carriers in the gulf.

“The forces (at Incirlik) perform the same function as those allied forces taking part in the operation in the south,” Murat Sungar told reporters in Ankara.

Sungar also said a U.S. search-and-rescue team has moved this week from Incirlik to the southeastern Turkish air base of Batman, 80 miles north of the Iraqi border.

“They have no involvement in operations. It is only a search-and-rescue team. I am not in a position to say what their numbers are or to define their duties,” Sungar said.

Faced with the prospect of an Iraqi missile attack, the United States has bolstered defenses at Incirlik with Patriot missiles. Adana residents who endured their first air raid alert Tuesday night--a false alarm--were startled Wednesday morning to see a flatbed truck hauling a Patriot battery join the heavy traffic on a main highway, presumably en route to a new emplacement near the base.