Pew Research investigates how Turks view their country's institutions.
Pew Research offers some insights gleaned from their Global Attitudes survey:
Throughout the country's history, the military has a played a major role in Turkish politics, and it continues to be a popular institution: 72% say it is having a very or somewhat good influence on the way things are going in Turkey. However, this is down from 85% in 2007. And the number of Turks who believe the military is having a very good impact has declined from 57% to 30% over this period. Confidence in the military has dropped most steeply among the nation's Kurdish population -- just 37% of Kurds give the military a positive rating, compared with 64% in the 2007 poll....Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's ratings have slipped over that last three years. Currently, 52% say he is having a good impact and 43% say he is having a bad impact, while in 2007 63% described his impact as good and 33% as bad. Unsurprisingly, Erdogan gets his highest marks from supporters of his own AKP, 90% of whom think he is having a positive effect. The prime minister receives especially strong ratings in the Central Anatolia region of the country (71% good), which is a stronghold of the AKP.
Views about Erdogan are also correlated with religiosity. Two-thirds (67%) of Muslim Turks who pray five times a day assign the prime minister a positive rating. Among those who pray at least once a week but less than five times daily, views are essentially split (51% good, 47% bad). And among those who hardly ever pray or only do so during religious holidays, just 36% say Erdogan is having good impact.
Although Erdogan's ratings have declined since 2007, he still gets considerably better marks than former Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit received in 2002 -- at the time, only 7% of Turks felt he was having a good influence on the country.
(AP Photo)
