Survey reveals Turkey’s deepening political divisions

Turkey last month launched a military incursion into the Kurdish enclave of Afrin in northern Syria, fearful that separatist groups would intensify their campaign to establish a Kurdish homeland in the region. (File/AFP)

ANKARA: More than two thirds of Turks object to their children playing with friends from families who support rival political parties, according to a new survey that reveals the deep ideological divisions within Turkish society.
The results, published on Monday, highlight the growing strain placed upon the country by more than a year of domestic political unrest and the continued turmoil in neighboring Syria.
While revealing the public’s widespread mistrust toward Turkey’s fellow NATO member the US, the survey also exposes a nation at odds with itself after a failed 2016 coup to oust President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
This stark polarization is being passed down through the generations, with 68 percent of respondents saying they do not want their children to play with peers from the political party they dislike the most. 
The survey of 2004 adults from 16 cities across Turkey was carried out by the Istanbul Bilgi University Center for Migration Research with contributions from the Black Sea Trust for Regional Cooperation, a project of the German Marshall Fund of the US.
Carried out in November and December last year, it offers a unique insight into a country that is of key strategic importance to the Arab world and Europe, and in the middle of one of the most sensitive periods in its recent political history.
On July 15, 2016 Erdogan survived a coup attempt by a faction of the Turkish armed forces. Government buildings including the parliament and presidential palace were hit with air strikes and tanks rolled into the streets in some of the worst unrest the country has seen in years. Almost 250 people were killed and more than 2,000 injured.
The government blamed the coup on a dissident US-based cleric, Fethullah Gulen, and responded with a sustained crackdown on his supporters that has led to the arrest of tens of thousands of people.
In January, it extended a “state of emergency” in place since the coup for a further three months. Erdogan’s powers had already been enhanced by a 2017 constitutional referendum that replaced the country’s parliamentary system with a presidential system.
Monday’s survey results show a country still coming to terms with these events even as its troops clash with Kurdish separatists across the border in Syria.
More than 43 percent of those asked said they felt closest to Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party, known as the AKP.
But there was widespread distrust among respondents of all political persuasions toward their opponents.
Almost 80 percent of participants said they would not want their daughters to marry a supporter of the political party they dislike the most. Around 70 percent said they would be unhappy if their neighbor supported the same rival.
The effect of the coup and the subsequent crackdown on dissent, however, has also left many Turks fearful of their government. Only 25 percent of respondents said they would be prepared to express their opinions about the current “state of emergency” on social media accounts and just 64 percent said they would be prepared to discuss them during dinner with family members.  
Turkey last month launched a military incursion into the Kurdish enclave of Afrin in northern Syria, fearful that separatist groups emboldened by recent territorial gains in their war against Daesh would intensify their decades-long campaign to establish a Kurdish homeland in the region.
The operation appeared to put Ankara on a collision course with Washington, which has been providing military backing to Kurdish militants in Syria and Iraq. But US officials offered mixed messages after the incursion — wary of alienating their NATO ally even as they try to keep their Kurdish proxies on the side.
The survey results show just how little trust there is toward the US among the Turkish population. More than 54 percent of respondents identified it as the main external threat to their country, followed by Israel.
Ozgur Unluhisarcikli, Ankara director of one of the survey’s sponsors, the German Marshall Fund of the US, told Arab News that an abiding distrust of the West was one of the few beliefs that united the disparate strands of Turkish society. 
The hostility dates back to the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire, which was carved up by the victorious Western powers after World War I, but it has been exacerbated by US support for the Syrian Kurds, he said.
The survey also showed people aligned with different parties agree in their hostility toward the 3.5 million Syrian refugees hosted in Turkey.
Supporters of all four of the main parties overwhelmingly  wanted Syrians to be deported to their own country.