Turkish Leader Fires Defense Minister in Family Feud : Mideast: Deposed official was once a favorite cousin, but he disagreed with wife of President Ozal. Nation’s Gulf War stance is unaffected.

President Turgut Ozal fired Minister of Defense Husnu Dogan on Friday after his once-favorite cousin took the wrong side of a scorching family feud over the political ambitions of Ozal’s wife, First Lady Semra Ozal.

Dogan is the third senior defense official to leave office in Turkey since the start of the Persian Gulf crisis. His predecessor had resigned in October in another row involving the ruling Motherland Party. In December, the chief of Turkey’s general staff quit to protest Ozal’s handling of Gulf and state policy.

Dogan’s departure is unlikely to affect Turkey’s staunchly anti-Iraq policy, a domain closely ruled by the president himself. Foreign Minister Ahmet Kurtcebe Alptemocin told Turkish reporters after meeting with President Bush on Friday that “there was full agreement on all matters.”

But a string of ill-explained departures from government posts in the last year, including those of two foreign ministers and a finance minister, have not helped Ozal’s efforts to present his country as a stable, pluralistic democracy.

“There is nothing now in Turkey except the politics of Ozal. He is all alone,” one Western diplomat said, noting that the firing was Ozal’s logical response to the biggest internal revolt against him during eight years in power as premier and, since 1989, as president.

Dogan was one of four members of a “holy alliance” of conservative-Islamic Cabinet ministers who have openly rebelled against the pro-Western Semra Ozal’s campaign to be elected to the key Istanbul provincial chairmanship of the Motherland Party.

Mrs. Ozal now says she reads the Koran each night before going to bed. But she has also taken time off from campaigning to eat at expensive night spots and has been known to drink alcoholic beverages and smoke an occasional cigar, and she stresses her support for the secular principles of Kemal Ataturk, founder of the Turkish republic in 1923.

Motherland Party disputes are heating up ahead of a congress in the spring to decide who will lead the party into a parliamentary election before the end of next year. Polls say the Motherland is supported by only 20% of voters in this rapidly developing Muslim country of 57 million people.

Prime Minister Yildirim Akbulut hopes to win over the Motherland’s main conservative-Islamic bloc but faces a strong challenge because of primary victories by supporters of Mesut Yilmaz, a free-market nationalist, a former foreign minister and new-found ally of Mrs. Ozal.

Officially, Dogan was fired in a phone call from the prime minister, his conservative ally. But Dogan accused Ozal of instituting the proceedings against him, which would make it an unconstitutional act.

Ozal, 64, last week accused Dogan of acting like a traitor over the entry into politics of Mrs. Ozal. Dogan, 46, a cousin once known as “the Orphan” because of the charity he received from the Ozals, was the official second-in-command founder of the Motherland Party in 1983.

Mrs. Ozal, 54, is continuing her forceful campaign for election in Istanbul, undaunted when party offices have been locked in her face or when enthusiastic supporters have daubed her with the blood of sacrificed sheep.

The retiring Istanbul party chairman is undergoing treatment at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn. The election is not until March 3, but Mrs. Ozal is already presiding over meetings from his desk or office.

“It’s frightful,” wrote Gungor Mengi, columnist in the mass-circulation daily newspaper Sabah. “The mentality that (penalizes) opposition will also reward support. We first smiled at Semra’s project, but now everyone is running to pledge allegiance. What a disgrace, what awful rottenness.”