The report also showed that a majority of Turks think Turkey should act alone in foreign affairs, while 20 percent say Turkey should act in cooperation with the Middle East.
Turkey’s relationship with the Middle East is more important than its ties with EU countries and Ankara should act independently in its own affairs, a majority of Turks believe, according to a recent public-opinion poll.
The Transatlantic Trends 2011 report, prepared by the German Marshall Fund, showed that a plurality of Turks consider the country’s neighbors in the Middle East to be more important to its economic interests (43 percent) and security interests (42 percent) than EU countries.
The report also showed that a majority of Turkish people think Turkey should act alone in foreign affairs, while one in five say Turkey should act in closest cooperation with Middle Eastern countries (20 percent) or EU members (19 percent). Only 8 percent think Turkey should cooperate most closely with the United States.
Support for EU bid up, but still low
Another highlighted part of the report addressed Turkey’s relationship with the European Union. According to the survey, there has been a 10-point increase in the percentage of Turks who think Turkish membership in the EU would be a good thing (48 percent), but such support remains much lower than it was in 2004 (73 percent).
Half of people surveyed in EU countries meanwhile said they did not agree that Turkey’s EU membership would be good for the bloc in economic terms. Romanians were the most likely to say that Turkey’s EU membership would be a good thing (48 percent) while the French (45 percent) and the Germans (40 percent) were the most likely to consider it a bad thing.
More than half of the people surveyed in several countries said they see Turkey’s participation in the EU as negative. However, 56 percent, including relatively strong majorities in Sweden (66 percent), the U.K. (65 percent), Spain (64 percent) and Germany (62 percent) said they did not believe that Turkey’s predominantly Muslim population was a reason to keep the country out of the bloc.
While Turks seemed to have a more positive view of the EU and NATO in this year’s survey, and EU respondents also had more positive attitudes toward Turkey, favorability toward Turkey among Americans decreased by eight percentage points, with 42 percent having a positive opinion of Turkey. There was a similar seven-point drop in the percentage of Americans who considered Turkey’s EU membership a good thing (34 percent).
In this year’s survey, 38 percent of Turks had a very unfavorable opinion of the United States, an 11 percentage point drop since 2010.
Libya and the Middle East
This year’s Marshall Fund public opinion survey also included a special chapter on Libya. EU respondents were, on average, evenly divided regarding the intervention in Libya, with 48 percent approving and 47 percent disapproving. A majority of U.S. respondents (59 percent) approved of the international intervention in Libya, but only 31 percent supported sending U.S. ground troops to assist the rebels who oppose Col. Moammar Gadhafi.
For the first time, a majority of Americans (56 percent) were meanwhile pessimistic about the prospects of stabilizing Afghanistan, as EU pessimism remained high (66 percent).
Another part in the report looked at whose role it should be to establish democracy in other countries. Americans and Turks were least likely among the countries surveyed to see promoting democracy in the Middle East and North Africa to be their role.
September 14, 2011
SOURCE: Hürriyet Daily News
