THE STRUGGLE FOR IRAQ: THE ALLIES; Turkey Begins To Think Twice About Sending Troops to Iraq

Caught between the Bush administration's entreaties to commit troops for peacekeeping duties and equally strong resistance from the Iraqis, Turkey has begun to back away from its initial readiness to deploy thousands of its soldiers to Iraq.

In statements over the past two days, Turkish officials said they are in no hurry to send their soldiers into an uncertain and possibly hostile situation in Iraq, where political leaders of all backgrounds have joined the Kurdish population in opposing the presence of Turkish troops.

The Turkish ambivalence was underlined on Thursday by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

''It's the United States that requested the sending of Turkish soldiers to Iraq,'' Mr. Erdogan said. ''We have not insisted on it.''

President Bush has been trying to convince a number of Muslim nations to send troops to Iraq to ease the burden on the American military and change the image of the occupation from that of a solely Western effort to one that is multiethnic as well as multinational.

Its only apparent success had been with Turkey, which has been trying to repair relations with the Bush administration after its refusal to allow American troops use Turkey as a base for the war on Iraq.

Earlier this month, the Turkish Parliament gave the government a free hand to negotiate a troop deployment in Iraq. But since then, public protests in Turkey and fierce objections from Iraqi political leaders have raised doubts about the plan within the powerful Turkish military.

In Washington, administration officials continued to express guarded confidence that Turkey would end up joining the allied forces in Iraq.

''We continue to believe, firmly, that Turkey can make an important contribution to stability in Iraq,'' said Adam Ereli, a spokesman for the State Department, adding that Washington and Ankara are still negotiating a possible deployment. ''We remain hopeful that an agreement to this end, that is satisfactory to all the parties, can be reached.''

At the same time, American officials in Iraq have also grown wary in the face of unanimous opposition to the Turkish deployment in the 25-member Iraqi Governing Council.

L. Paul Bremer III, the American administrator of Iraq, has advised Washington to let the Iraqis and Turks try to thrash out their differences on their own.

''Ambassador Bremer communicated to the administration the extreme Iraqi sensitivity to the prospect of the troops coming in,'' said Dan Senor, a senior advisor to Mr. Bremer. ''He recommended for the next step that there be a direct dialogue between the Turks and the Governing Council.''

The Iraqi interim leadership, which has been slow to agree on many other matters, has been able to unite forcefully around the issue of the Turkish deployment. The Governing Council has agreed to discuss the matter with Turkey, but Iraqi officials made it clear that they would do so mainly to accommodate the United States.

Hoshyar Zebari, the interim Iraqi foreign minister, said on Thursday that the Governing Council recognized the Bush administration's desire to buttress its occupation forces with soldiers from a Muslim country.

But he said Iraqis fear the presence of troops from Turkey, or elsewhere in the region, could provoke more violence in Iraq by reigniting old hatreds and suspicions.

''The Governing Council has made it very clear to the administration and to Turkey that it does not favor the involvement of any neighboring countries in this situation because of the sensitivities involved,'' Mr. Zebari said by telephone from Madrid, where he is attending a conference on aid to Iraq.

Northern Iraq, which borders Turkey, is overwhelmingly Kurdish, as is the southeastern part of Turkey. The main tribal and political groups of the Kurdish regions in Iraq have sometimes cooperated with Turkey in suppressing a Kurdish insurgency there. But the Iraqis are also largely sympathetic to the struggle of Turkey's Kurds for greater autonomy.