MEMRI Blog: Columnist Burak Bekdil of Turkish Daily News in his article yesterday, questioned the logic behind statistics. He wrote that according to a nine-country poll conducted by Angus Reid Strategies, two-thirds of adults in Turkey hold an unfavorable opinion about the United States and the percentage of Turks who think the American state is a danger to world peace (66%) was highest among the nine countries surveyed.
The same survey also revealed that only 1% of Turks think Iran is a global security threat, and 4 % see Al-Qaeda as a global menace. Bekdil asks “Do Turks have terribly confused minds? How can they believe the U.S. to be a far bigger threat than a terrorist organization that bombed Istanbul a few years ago, killing over 60 people?”
He continues to wonder, “How can it be that 47% of the people vote for a party that is friendly to the U.S. yet 66% of the same people see that country as biggest security threat? The explanation must be ‘sentimental thinking in reaction to U.S. policies combined with unusual tolerance to the incumbent AKP government’.
Bekdil explains the possible reasons why Iran is not seen as a threat by the fact that as Iran is co-Muslim and that there is admiration in Turkey for anyone who can stand up against America that Turks are so angry with.
Posted on 12/16/2007 4:17 PM by Andrew Bostom
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