German Marshall Fund: Turks attitude towards NATO, Russia, Iran and China grew cooler

PanARMENIAN.Net - The giant research conducted by German Marshall Fund revealed that Turkish people who started to look at the external world with suspicion in recent years isolated themselves from the world even more in 2007.



The annual survey of the Fund of the U.S. also showed that 58 per cent of Europeans, including 74% of Turkish people regarded U.S. leadership in world affairs as "undesirable" and only 36% thought it "desirable".



The Transatlantic Tendencies 2007 survey applied by German Marshall Fund to a thousand people in 12 countries including Turkey has revealed that Turks get more and more isolated from the world day by day. Although Turkish public has a status of candidate for EU membership, Turks' hopes for accession to EU fell from 54% to 40% in 2006. Turks' feeling of warmth towards EU is measured as 26 degrees this year against 52 degrees of 2004.



Turks' attitude towards NATO, Russia, Iran and China grew cooler. Attitude towards Palestinians warmed from 7% to 42%.



German Marshall Fund authorities stated that Turks have moved away from the international political issues and became introvert; and linked the opposition to the U.S. in Turkey to the issues of "continuation of PKK problem, Bush administration and Iraqi war."



According to the authorities, the reasons for the cooler attitude towards Europe are the difficulty of EU negotiations and the existence of anti-Turkey leaders, APA reports.