HEALTH : Turkey Faces Chernobyl’s Political Fallout : Seven years after blast, leukemia scare has many accusing Ozal’s government of downplaying the earlier risk.

Just as this week’s two apparently harmless fires at the Chernobyl nuclear plant rekindled popular fears in Ukraine, Turkey has been reliving its own nightmare of those fearful days of radioactive clouds and rain.

But whereas Ukrainians have lived for years with the impact of the April, 1986, disaster--8,000 people are thought to have died as a result--the Turks 700 miles to the south had always been told that they had little to worry about.

After the accident, Turkish leaders calmly went on television to sip tea that had been harvested on Turkey’s Black Sea coast, whose terraces soak up rain from the north throughout each spring. Scientists declared that there was no general health threat.

Until a month ago, that is. Suddenly newspapers were full of pictures of balding, leukemia-stricken children. Their angry parents stood beside them, accusing the government of negligence as their loved ones fell victim to cancer.

What happened, the press asked, to tons of contaminated tea that was supposed to be buried but is still in storage? Did the government distribute 50 tons of Black Sea hazelnuts to soldiers and schoolchildren in 1989? Was it true that Turkey sold radioactive tea in revenge to the old Soviet Union or that Turkish hazelnuts had contaminated chocolates all over the world?

Much of this soon proved to be speculation, even if one official admitted that mildly radioactive tea had occasionally been mixed with uncontaminated stock to bring its radiation reading down to safe levels.

The government at that time was led by Prime Minister Turgut Ozal, who said recently that the latest fuss was “purely political.”

But the present government of Prime Minister Suleyman Demirel says there may be something to all the rumors and accuses Ozal’s government of “incredible irresponsibility.” It has offered to pay for all leukemia treatment and to investigate what it says is a rise in cancer cases among children in northern parts of Turkey that were most exposed to Chernobyl radiation.

Happily, most of the radioactive cloud emitted by Chernobyl was blown away from Turkey at the time. An early report by Turkish scientists said that of the country’s population of 60 million, only 100,000 Turks were exposed to slightly radioactive rainfall.

One Istanbul hospital reported a rise in child leukemia cases three years after the 1986 blast. “Before Chernobyl, we treated 45 to 55 cases (of child leukemia) a year,” said Dr. Gunduz Gedikoglu, president of the Children’s Leukemia Foundation in Istanbul. “There was no rise until 1989, when we treated 94 cases, and 1990, when there were 72. Now the level is back to normal.”

Health statistics, however, are still contradictory. Some figures show that there was no rise in cancer. Gedikoglu said the proportion of cases of child leukemia from the supposedly high-risk northern coast had stayed constant at about 4% in his hospital.

Whatever the truth, the affair has had wide domestic repercussions. Newspapers advise readers how to join the ranks of people who have sued for damages, and on Tuesday the Parliament will start work on a full investigation.

The controversy is also a stick with which academics can beat the hated Higher Education Board, set up by the leaders of Turkey’s 1980 military coup. The board had banned all scientists from commenting on Chernobyl.

One group of professors declared that considering the risk, it was crazy to encourage people to drink more tea, Turkey’s national drink.

Specialists say that the calm reaction of Ozal’s government--the statement “a little radiation is good for you” was even attributed to him--may prove to be the correct one but that he was wrong to stifle all warnings of danger.

“Panic is being created because of a wish to take revenge on the thickheaded approach of the previous period,” said Turkan Akyol, a doctor and state minister in Demirel’s government. “There is no proof that cancer has increased. This panic is as dangerous as the radiation. . . . Think of the feelings of pregnant mothers on the Black Sea.”