Family Ties Spark Party Revolt in Turkey : Politics: First lady’s bid for post incites president’s opponents. Prime minister says Parliament’s uneasy alliances may be about to burst apart.

It all seemed so simple at first: Turkey’s pro-Western First Lady Semra Ozal, long an influence on Turkish affairs of state, would quietly run for an official ruling party post.

Her husband, President Turgut Ozal, could hardly have imagined that this would trigger an unprecedented revolt against him by a “holy alliance” of Islamic conservatives, which threatens not just to split the ruling Motherland Party but to undermine his regional leadership gains from the Persian Gulf crisis.

For days, the Gulf War raging over Turkey’s southeastern border has been pushed aside as Ozal, his wife and their supporters have decamped to Istanbul from Ankara to rally local district politicians against an opposing faction led by the deputy prime minister and Ozal’s cousin, Minister of Defense Husnu Dogan.

“State television has become the stage for family disputes. I thought I was watching the TV series ‘Mother-in-Laws.’ It’s a tragi-comedy,” said Husamettin Cindoruk, a senior leader of the right-wing opposition True Path Party.

Ozal took the television stage to accuse his wife’s opponents of ignorance, adding that his cousin Dogan was a traitor who showed no gratitude for all the help given him during his education.

A tight-lipped Dogan, the Motherland’s official No. 2 founder in 1983, snapped back that “he had never given anything to anyone expecting anything in return.”

This was all missing the point, said respected Milliyet newspaper commentator Yalcin Dogan (no relation). He plausibly argued that the campaign against Semra Ozal was being led by Ozal’s two conservative younger brothers.

In short, the whole affair seems to be a modern replay of a fratricidal medieval Ottoman palace intrigue.

But while Turkey’s sensationalist press is lapping up the scandal, to the point of printing transcripts of Semra Ozal’s political plotting by telephone, serious issues lie only just below the surface.

After eight years in uninterrupted power over Turkey’s 57 million people, the uneasy alliance of factions within the Motherland Party may be about to burst apart, according to Prime Minister Yildirim Akbulut, who is showing other signs of withdrawing from President Ozal, his political mentor.

“Our party has come to a parting of the road . . . some people (Semra Ozal) have come forward saying they are liberal nationalists . . . our party’s view is clear. It is conservative nationalist,” Akbulut said.

Unrest in the party did not start with the Semra affair, but with a controversial reform package pushed through by the president shortly after the start of the Gulf crisis.

The increasingly autocratic Ozal, a key U.S. ally and military aid recipient during the Gulf crisis, has only faced revolts of former intimates singly in the past. Few care to predict the ultimate consequences as both sides have vowed to push their causes to the end.

With a taste for night clubs, expensive clothes, a whiskey and the occasional cigar, Semra Ozal, 56, flouts traditional Turkish Muslim traditions. A short, plump figure, she stands for a pro-Western, free-market trend in the Motherland Party and constantly underlines her belief in secular principles attributed to the founder of modern Turkey, Kemal Ataturk.

Her political career--she wants to be elected chairwoman of the Motherland’s party organization in Istanbul, Turkey’s biggest city--nearly came to a dead halt on its first day on Thursday when only five of 25 Istanbul district chairman took up her invitation for lunch.

A spirited campaign around district offices brought her many hand kisses and sacrificed sheep, but the chairmen did not budge. She will need all the support the president can give her to win the post at a March 3 primary. This would be the precursor to an April Motherland congress to elect a new leader.

“We’ve fought tooth and nail to come this far. I have no eye on the premiership or party chairmanship. If that was the case I would never have come down from the palace . . . I want to unify the party, to bring back the 1983 spirit,” Serma Ozal repeated to the small crowds that greeted her.