GMF “Turkish Perceptions Survey” launched at TEPAV TEPAV Deputy Director Çağlar says the survey is a beneficial tool to measure the effectiveness of policies.
ANKARA- The results of the Turkish Perceptions Survey carried out by the German Marshall Fund was launched on Wednesday, October 7th 2015 at the TEPAV premises.
TEPAV Deputy Director Esen Çağlar said in his opening remarks that the results of Turkish Perceptions Survey shows how government policies are reflected on end users and how collecting similar data on a regular basis would be a beneficial tool for policy makers to measure the effectiveness of policies.
The results of the survey were presented by Özgür Ünlühisarcıklı, GMF Ankara Office Director and by Emre Erdoğan, Founding Director, Infakto Reserch Workshop. Ünlühisarcıklı said that this survey was conducted after June 7th elections when general perceptions were largely affected by election’s results and emphasised that the survey should be carried out on yearly basis in order to have better comparisons of the results obtained. Ünlühisarcıklı reflected on how having this type of surveys projects how the public of Turkey perceive policies and how perceptions could be a toolkit to further enhance the policy framework.
Turkish Perceptions Survey
The Turkish Perceptions survey, conducted by the German Marshall Fund with financial support from the embassy of the United States of America in Ankara, is aimed at analyzing how domestic and foreign policy issues have impacted the perceptions of Turkish citizens. The survey covers the economy and domestic issues, international relations, foreign policy and security, and immigration.
Some of the key findings by the survey are as follows:
Economic and domestic issues
47% of the respondents said that the current economic situation is worse that what it was five years ago while 44% of respondents said the economic situation will become worse in the next twelve months. When asked about the most important issue facing Turkey, a significant portion of the respondents named either economy 28% or unemployment 23%.
International relations
When asked to name Turkey’s most important partner, 50% of respondents failed to give a definite answer, 41% said they did not know, and 9% said Turkey did not have one. When asked about other countries perceptions were generally unfavorable except those with which Turks has kinship ties such as Azerbaijan. The country was perceived favourably by 63% of respondents. Russia, the most positively perceived neighboring country after Azerbaijan, was viewed favorably by 26% of respondents. Two other neighboring countries, Greece and Syria were viewed with disfavor at levels of 15% and 14%, respectively. Countries in Turkey’s immediate neighborhood, Armenia and Israel, were seen the least favorably by respondents (10% and 8%, respectively). In addition to widely unfavorable views about other countries, Turks generally distrusted international institutions. The most trusted institutions were the European Court of Human Rights (44%) and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (39%). The European Union was the third most trusted international institution (39%). Though the majority of Turks cannot identify one of their country’s strategic partners, among those respondents who could name one, the United States received the highest score (27%), followed by Azerbaijan (21%), Germany (17%), and Russia (13%).
When asked with whom Turkey should cooperate on international matters, 29% said that Turkey should act alone, 25% said it should cooperate with the countries of the European Union and 14% preferred the United States, adding up to a plurality (39%) that prefers cooperating with western countries.
Respondents were divided over whether NATO was still essential for Turkey’s security: 38% of respondents said it was still essential and 35% said it no longer was. Opinions of EU membership remained positive where 41% of respondents viewed favorably and 44% of respondents think that the EU membership would be beneficial for the Turkish economy.
Foreign policy and security
Seventy percent of respondents said that Turkey should deal first with its internal problems.On the security matter, ISIS seemed to be viewed as a threat in the region. The survey showed that there is a broad consensus against ISIS, among the Turkish society. When asked, 91% of respondents said that ISIS was a terrorist organization and 82% of them said that it was a threat to Turkey.
Immigration
A majority of the respondents are concerned about refugees from various countries, but particularly with those coming from Syria. An overwhelming majority of 84% said that they were worried by refugees coming from Syria. 64% expressed their worries about immigrants from African countries and 54% were worried about immigrants from Turkic and previous Soviet republics. A similarly overwhelming majority of 81% of respondents thought that immigrants have not integrated well into Turkish society and when asked about Turkey’s policies toward refugees, 68% of respondents wanted more restrictive policies. When asked about immigrants currently living in Turkey, 73% said that the existing immigrants should be sent back home and only 8% said they should be offered legal status in Turkey.
You can access result of the survey from here.
