NEARLY 40 PERCENT OF YOUNG AK PARTY VOTERS ARE ‘KEMALIST’
Today’s Zaman
July 22 2009
Turkey
Thirty-eight out of every 100 young persons who voted for the Justice
and Development Party (AK Party), a conservative political party,
define themselves as "Ataturkist-Kemalist," a survey conducted by
Selcuk Sirin, a professor at New York University and Bahcesehir
University, has reported.
The results of the "Young Identities Research" were announced yesterday
at the Besiktas campus of Bahcesehir University. The surprising
results pointed to widespread diversity among the voters of the AK
Party. Fourteen percent of those surveyed who voted for the staunchly
secularist Republican People’s Party (CHP) identified themselves as
members of the "Islamic segment" of society.
The survey was conducted among 1,403 young people between the ages
of 18 and 25, 60 percent of whom are university students across 52
provinces, 253 smaller districts and some villages. According to the
"multi-faceted political belongingness analysis," 78 out of every 100
young persons who voted for the AK Party said they were part of the
"Islamic segment," while 65 percent said they were conservative and
38 percent said they were "Ataturkist-Kemalist."
Eighty-nine percent of CHP voters surveyed defined themselves as
"Kemalist-Ataturkist," 60 percent as "leftist or social democrat"
and 14 percent identified themselves as a member of the Islamic
segment. Five percent of respondents said they were of Armenian
descent.
Sirin interpreted the results as an indicator that young people today
are free to express their political identities, noting that today’s
youth was not raised with the fears of the previous generation. Sirin
said he believed Turkey’s future looks promising, based on the survey’s
results. He also said in Turkey, politics was involved in daily life
much more than was necessary, stating that people tended to treat
one’s political identity as part of one’s personality.