Turkey remains popular for Middle Eastern nations, TESEV study finds

TESEV on Thursday released the results of its survey titled “Perceptions about Turkey in the Middle East,” conducted on 2,323 people in 16 countries in the Middle East and North Africa. The findings are not radically different from the findings of a similar poll the foundation conducted last year in that Turkey still remains well liked in the region, but there has been a slight decrease in Turkey's popularity in some countries, most notably in Syria and Iran.

In response to a question asking participants to choose between a list of countries in terms of having positive opinions about that country, Turkey was ranked first by 78 percent of them. Seventy-seven percent also said that despite its increasingly tense relations with Israel Turkey contributes positively to regional peace. Seventy-five percent of respondents said Turkey should contribute to finding a solution to the situation of Palestine, while 61 percent of them said they saw Turkey as a model for their country. Twenty-two percent said they did not believe Turkey could be a good model for Middle Eastern nations, while 13 percent were undecided.

Turkey was followed by the United Arab Emirates (70 percent), Palestine (66 percent), China (65 percent), Saudi Arabia and Lebanon (64 percent) and Egypt (62 percent) in terms of positive sentiment felt toward a country.

The researchers say most of the percentages are very similar to results obtained in the previous year's survey, indicting that the positive sentiment toward Turkey in the Middle East is gaining a more structural quality. They also say that “as long as those governing Turkey do not make a serious mistake, the positive sentiment among the people of the Middle East for Turkey will remain in place.”

The results also indicate that Turkey still remains a trusted country for intermediating between third countries. The survey also found that Turkey is seen as much an economic power as a political power in the region.

Syria is the least trusting of Turkey among the 16 countries where the survey was conducted, with 44 percent saying they had a positive sentiment toward Turkey, while only 30 percent said they were pleased with Turkey's reaction to regional development in the past year. Only 31 percent said Turkey could be a model for Syria to look to, but 58 percent said they believed Turkey had important contributions to make to peace in the Middle East.

The majority of the participants answered Saudi Arabia, in response to a question on which country they believed was the most economically potent in the region, and Turkey, when the question was asked on which will be the strongest economy in 10 years.

Views on Arab Spring

Another important finding of the poll was that only 52 percent of participants said they believed that the changes brought about by what has come to be called the Arab Spring will have positive affects on their country. Twenty-two percent said the consequences were likely to be negative for their country. The countries that the average person in the Middle East believed would benefit from the Arab Spring as a positive drive for change were Libya (92 percent), Tunisia (89 percent) and Egypt (75 percent). Sixty-percent said they believed the Arab Spring would bring positive results for the entire region. Most responses also emphasized the need for peaceful measures. Even in Libya, only 32 percent of the respondents said they believed in the need of using violence for regime change. The average support for violence as a means of regime change for the entire region (all 16 countries combined) was 20 percent, while 75 percent said they supported peaceful demonstrations.

Only 5 percent of Syrian respondents said they supported violent protest methods, compared to 95 percent in Libya, a country that experienced a NATO intervention.

The Arab world, according to the poll, believes that economy is the biggest problem of the region, with 40 percent of all participants saying their country's biggest problem was the economy. Sixty-two percent of respondents, however, said they were hopeful about the future, based on the recent transformation the area has undergone over the past year. However, these figures fell to 47 percent when respondents were queried about the prospects of their own home country.

Israel is unarguably perceived as the biggest threat to peace in the Middle East, according to 47 percent of participants, while 24 percent said the main threat to peace in the region was the US.