PanARMENIAN.Net

German Marshall Fund: Turks attitude towards NATO,
Russia, Iran and China grew cooler
07.09.2007 19:02 GMT+04:00

/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.