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POLITICS: U.S. Viewed as Turkey’s “Greatest Threat”

Jonathan Bell

WASHINGTON, Sep 7 2007 (IPS) - Nearly two-thirds of the Turkish public named the United States as their country’s greatest future threat, a recent Pew Global Attitudes Project survey has revealed – the highest percentage of any Middle Eastern or Islamic country polled.

The survey, which was also conducted in Palestine, Egypt, Lebanon, Kuwait, Jordan, Morocco and Israel, asked an open ended question: “What country or groups pose the greatest threat to (survey country) in the future?” Turkey was the only country in which a majority of respondents pointed to the U.S.

Turkey, a U.S. NATO ally and recipient of U.S. and NATO security guarantees, also harbours the second most negative attitudes towards the U.S., with 83 percent holding an “unfavourable” opinion of it – up 29 percent since 2002, the biggest drop in public opinion of the U.S. in recent years.

Eighty-six percent of Palestinians express an unfavourable opinion of the U.S., the most negative response from a Middle Eastern country.

Dr. Emre Erdogan, a political scientist and founding partner of Infakto Research Workshop, says that this is “a result of intensifying terrorist activities of the PKK” – an armed militant group founded in the 1970s also known as the Kurdistan Workers Party – which has found increasing support since the Iraq war began.

The Turkish people “perceive the U.S. as responsible for the worsening situation,” said Erdogan in a World Public Opinion (WPO)/Programme on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA) analysis of the Pew results.

The “increasing terrorist and political activity of the PKK” is seen to be “under direct supervision of the Northern Iraq Administration and the U.S.”, and the Turkish media “continuously present evidence for this [U.S.-PKK] collaboration,” said Erdogan.

According to a 2005 Infakto poll, 71 percent of Turks think that “the West has helped separatist groups in Turkey gain strength”, and a Pew 2007 survey found that 79 percent of Turks oppose “U.S.-led efforts to fight terrorism”.

“[T]his intolerance and antipathy towards the PKK became converted to the perception of the U.S. as the major enemy of the country,” Erdogan said. “Before the invasion of Iraq, the worst enemy of the country was stated as Greece or Armenia… rather than the U.S.”

The 2005 Infakto poll also found that 66 percent think that “Western countries want to divide and break Turkey like they divided and broke the Ottoman Empire in the past,” an idea that Steven Kull, director of PIPA and editor for WPO, found “surprising”.

“[The] Turks are very concerned that the Kurds are going to leave and want to gain independence,” Kull told IPS, but the suggestion that “the U.S. is intentionally seeking to divide [Turkey] surprised me…the U.S. has a commitment to protect Turkey from aggression, and has never threatened to [directly] attack Turkey, unlike Greece, which is why I find this particularly striking.”

Dissatisfaction with U.S. foreign policy is not only prevalent in Turkey. A January 2007 Gallup poll of U.S. citizens found that 56 percent of respondents were dissatisfied with the current role of the U.S. in the world – up from the 51 percent who shared that view in 2006 – and not only do majorities of U.S. citizens see the world as more dangerous, but large numbers attribute that to the George W. Bush administration’s foreign policy.

A Chicago Council on Global Affairs poll found that 69 percent of U.S. citizens support Washington’s involvement in world affairs, reflecting the trend of greater support for U.S. involvement since the attacks of 9/11, but a February 2007 Gallup poll showed that only 15 percent of U.S. citizens believe the U.S. should take “the leading role” in solving international problems – 58 percent said the U.S. should “take a major role but not the leading role.”

The Pew survey found that 81 percent of Turks dislike “American ideas about democracy”, 83 percent dislike “American ways of doing business”, and 68 percent dislike “American music, movies and television”, statistics that have all increased by at least 22 percent in the last five years.

Erdogan commented that, before, Turks might dislike the U.S. government but they still appreciated its culture, whereas now there is an “emerging antipathy” towards U.S. citizens and their life style, with 77 percent saying they held unfavourable views of U.S. citizens.