Poll shows remarkable decline in military’s popularity among Turks

Turks also continue to express a largely negative opinion regarding the US and other major world powers, such as the European Union, China and Russia. The results of the poll, conducted by the respected Pew Research Center between April 12 and 30, come only days ahead of the referendum on the government-backed constitutional reform package, which will be held on Sunday.

The center, disclosing the results of the poll on Tuesday, recalled that throughout the country's history, the military has a played a major role in Turkish politics. According to the poll, the military continues to be a popular institution, with 72 percent saying that it is having a very, or somewhat, good influence on Turkey. However, this is down from 85 percent in 2007, while the number of Turks who believe the military is having a very good impact has declined from 57 percent to 30 percent.

Confidence in the military has dropped most steeply among the nation’s Kurdish population -- just 37 percent of Kurds gave the military a positive rating, compared with 64 percent in the 2007 poll.

The poll also revealed that Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s ratings have slipped over the past three years. Currently, 52 percent of people believe he is having a good impact and 43 percent say he is having a negative impact -- while in 2007, 63 percent of respondents described his impact as positive and 33 percent as negative.

“Unsurprisingly, Erdoğan gets his highest marks from supporters of his own AKP [Justice and Development Party], 90 percent of whom think he is having a positive effect. The prime minister receives especially strong ratings in the Central Anatolia region of the country (71 percent good), which is a stronghold of the AKP,” the center said.

Although Erdoğan’s ratings have declined since 2007, he still received considerably better marks than what late Prime Minister Bülent Ecevit received in 2002 -- at the time only 7 percent of Turks felt he was having a positive influence on the country. The media, meanwhile, received the lowest ratings among the institutions tested, with only 30 percent of Turks believing the media is having a positive effect on society.

Negative ratings for major powers

Turkey was the country in which the US received its lowest favorability rating in every Pew Global Attitudes survey conducted between 2006 and 2009. This year, just 17 percent of Turks had a positive opinion of the US -- meaning the US received its least positive ratings from Turkey, Pakistan and Egypt. Still, the number of Turks who hold a positive view of the US is larger today than it was at its nadir in 2007, when only 9 percent rated the US favorably.

Meanwhile, as negotiations regarding Turkey’s bid for membership in the European Union have stalled, attitudes toward the EU have deteriorated. In 2004, 58 percent of Turks held a favorable opinion of the EU; however, by 2009 this number had plummeted to 22 percent. Views of the EU have improved slightly over the past year -- currently, 28 percent rate the organization favorably. Support for joining the EU has also declined. In 2005, 68 percent of Turks wanted their country to become an EU member; today, a slim 54 percent majority holds this view.

Ratings for both Iran and China improved marginally between 2009 and 2010, while attitudes toward Russia have remained consistently low over the past three years: 17 percent of Turks said they had a positive view of Russia in 2007, while 16 percent expressed this view in the 2010 survey.

While Turks express largely negative opinions about other countries, they also tend to believe the feeling is mutual. When asked how they think people in other nations around the world feel about Turkey, 68 percent of Turks say they think their country is generally disliked -- the highest percentage among the 22 countries surveyed. The only other nation in which a majority believes their country is unpopular abroad is the US -- 60 percent of Americans think the US is generally disliked by other countries around the globe.