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[Simon]

Turks Look East, Polls Confirm
By BURAK EGE BEKDIL and UMIT ENGINSOY
Published: 22 Sep 2010 16:27

ANKARA - Two recent international surveys confirm Turks' changing perceptions on international matters in favor of the East and their disillusion about the West.

On Sept. 7, the U.S.-based Pew Research Center's Global Attitudes Survey revealed that:

■ Only 17 percent of Turks have a positive opinion of the U.S., the lowest, along with Pakistan and Egypt, among the 22 nations included in the survey. That is up from 9 percent in 2007 but down from 30 percent in 2004.

■ Those Turks with a favorable opinion of the European Union have diminished to 28 percent from 58 percent in 2004. In the meantime, Turkish support for joining the EU dropped from 68 percent in 2005 to 54 percent today.

■ Twenty-six percent of Turks have a positive opinion about Iran, 20 percent about China and 16 percent about Russia.

And on Sept. 15, another U.S.-based institution, the German Marshall Fund's Transatlantic Trends Survey revealed that:

■ The percentage of Turks who think EU membership would be a good thing fell from 73 percent in 2004 to 38 percent in 2010.

■ Forty-eight percent of Turks are not concerned about Iran acquiring nuclear weapons. This ratio compares with 79 percent of EU residents and 86 percent of U.S. residents surveyed.

■ The percentage of Turks who think that Turkey should act in the closest cooperation with Middle East countries on international matters has doubled to 20 percent from 2009. Cooperation with the EU is favored by 13 percent and cooperation with the U.S. by 6 percent only. In other words, more Turks approve of cooperation with Middle Eastern countries than with the EU and the U.S. combined.

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