Turkish outpost: how war workers see the conflict.

• Author: Chatterjee, Pratap

EVERY OTHER DAY, United States Air Force F-15 Strike Eagles and F-16 Fighting Falcons roar aloft over the Kurdish quarter of the city of Adana, about an hour's drive inland from the Mediterranean coast of central Turkey, to patrol the skies over northern Iraq.

I arrive in Adana on Christmas Eve to check out the Incirlik military base, where the jet pilots are housed, seven miles outside the industrial metropolis of one million people.

Adana is mostly off limits to the thousands of British and American troops and reservists who are pouring into Turkey in preparation for possible war. Instead, the soldiers' main source of entertainment is the mile-long strip of shops immediately outside the base gates. Restaurants, gun dealers, carpet sellers, tailors, and bars offer goods ranging from burritos to pirate copies of the latest James Bond movies on DVD to homesick Americans. Along the strip, local women often leave the Cheers bar or the Happy House restaurant holding onto soldiers' arms to make a quick trip back to a cheap hotel in town before curfew closes the main base gate at 11 P.M.

On Christmas Day, however, the strip is quiet. At the Happy House, the only customers from the base are a group of older soldiers eating hamburgers and a fresh-faced twenty-something Texan who is struggling to converse with a middle-aged Turkish woman.

Mustapha, a Happy House regular, a.k.a., Tony Montana, greets us as we walk in. "What would you like, my friend? A car for the week or how about a girlfriend? All of these women are my bitches, my `ho's. Just say the word."

Over several beers, he glumly explains that business has been bad for a while. "It's the war. The Americans are afraid of terrorist attacks, so nobody is allowed to spend the night in town, and many would rather celebrate inside the base," he says. "In the past, the American soldiers were very friendly and we had great times together. One of the guys gave me my name, Tony Montana. Then I found out that another Turkish guy had taken the same name, so I went over to him and said: Listen, there can only be one Tony Montana, so you better change your name to something else like Joe. Now he's Joe Montana."

At 9 P.M. the bar owner decides to give up and close shop, so we wait outside for a "dolmus" shuttle back into Adana with Mustapha. During the ride back, he tells us that he applied for a job on the base with no luck. "That's what everyone here wants to do. Work at the base exchange, the bowling...