You need to make the enemy ship attack your assets within the station's range - even then the turrets might not fire at all.
Attack here means that the enemy ship has an attack command with your asset in it. If a K attacks your assets with its turrets only that doesn't seem to count, that will not trigger a response ime. It needs to have a command saying attack [whatever player owned object] within the def station turret range.
Some say assigning the bait LTs/ships to the def station helps, but i didn't notice that.
Did some experimenting
here.
I could trigger some attacks with the docked gorgons in there - but that depends on geometry too much.