WITH TIME running out before something dramatic happens in Iraq, Turkey's rookie government finds itself in a not-very-welcome front-row seat. Washington is massaging the new faces in Ankara to a fare-thee-well. The reform-minded, Islamic-rooted Justice and Development Party, which has just taken power, is being tugged in all directions at once.

Less secular than its predecessors, the new government is nonetheless pushing hard to join the European Union. France and Germany are resisting. The United States is leaning heavily on them in Turkey's favor. And here's a turnabout - Greece, the old enemy, is also on Turkey's side.

The government said last week that it couldn't support the deployment of tens of thousands of U.S. troops in Turkey, though it would be willing to let the Americans continue to use air bases there in case of action against Iraq.

Recep Tayyip Erdogan, leader of the Justice and Development Party, is taking time out from a European summit in Denmark this week for a one-day trip to the White House, where he's likely to get the full Texas-podner treatment.

After Paul Wolfowitz, the deputy secretary of defense, went to Ankara last week, a "senior U.S. official" said the United States had promised to prevent the emergence of an independent Kurdish state in Iraq, and also promised that the Kurds wouldn't get their hands on Iraqi oil. The Turks don't want to see their own restive Kurdish population getting any help - financial, political or otherwise - from enclaves in Iraq.

Mr. Wolfowitz hinted at the hundreds of millions of dollars the United States would invest in Turkish air bases if it got the OK to use them. But Turks believe their economy took a $40 billion hit with the last gulf war, and they're going to want more than renovations at a couple of airfields this time.

So - Europe beckons but resists. The United States drapes a friendly arm over the shoulder. The Turks are expected to play the role of "good Muslims."

But the Americans are solidly identified with the "bad secularists" who until recently ran things there, and a recent survey by the Pew Research Center found anti-American feeling in Turkey to be so high (above 50 percent) that it is surpassed only in the Middle East and Pakistan.

That's a huge headache-in-waiting, for both Ankara and Washington. The Turkish government worries about whether it can resist the maelstrom that may soon develop along its southeastern border. It's not an idle fear.