TURKEY: USG APPROVAL RATINGS STILL IN BASEMENT;

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 04 ANKARA 001128

SIPDIS

DEPARTMENT ALSO FOR EUR/SE, ECA AND R

E.O. 12958: DECL: 08/02/2019
TAGS: SCUL PGOV PREL TU US
SUBJECT: TURKEY: USG APPROVAL RATINGS STILL IN BASEMENT;
PRESIDENT OBAMA THE EXCEPTION

REF: 08 ANKARA 2158

Classified By: Ambassador James Jeffrey for 1.4 (b,d)


1. (C) SUMMARY. Based on the latest PEW survey (but broadly
consistent with other polls we have seen recently) USG
approval ratings in Turkey continue to lag, although there
are glimmers of improvement in certain categories such as
confidence that the US will do the right thing in
international affairs (33 percent versus 2 percent last
year). Some 18 percent of Turks see the U.S. as a partner
(versus 8 percent last year) while 40 percent see America as
an enemy (down from 70 percent last year). Still, the USG's
overall rating of 14 percent (below China's 16 percent) has
barely shifted from last year's 12 percent, and suggests that
the Turkish public remains deeply scarred by the Iraq war and
its aftermath. The deep schisms in Turkey's internal
political landscape are also problematic in that the US is
often reflexively blamed by all sides (Ergenekon). INR/R
polling has demonstrated the effectiveness of exchange
programs in that respondents with first-hand experience of
the U.S. are able to differentiate between their views of
U.S. policies they disagree with, the U.S. in general and
Americans. Such differentiation does not take place with
Turks who do not have firsthand U.S. experience or who know
someone who has. Exchange programs remain a high mission
priority. In addition, emphasizing our enduring partnership
with Turkey, our commitment to treating Turkey with respect,
and our willingness to listen to Turkish views is something
that we will continue to do in word and deed. END SUMMARY.

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Pew,s 2009 Survey Results
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2. (U) The Pew Research Center's 2009 twenty-five nation
Global Attitudes Survey showed little change from last year
in Turks' opinion of the U.S. and Americans, with favorable
ratings of 14 percent for both in 2009 compared to 12 percent
for the former and 13 percent for the latter in 2008. On
other topics, Turkish opinion while still negative improved
significantly. For example, 33 percent expressed confidence
that the U.S. will do the right thing in international
affairs in 2009 compared to 2 percent in 2008. Some 18
percent see the U.S. as a partner and 40 percent as an enemy
this year compared to 8 percent and 70 percent respectively
in 2008. Twenty four percent favor U.S. efforts to fight
terrorism now compared to 9 percent when this question was
last asked in 2007. Thirty three percent of Turks expressed
confidence in President Obama compared to 2 percent for
President Bush in the 2008 poll.

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Explaining the Numbers
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3. (SBU) The 14 percent favorable rating for the U.S. among
Turks needs to be put in context, both globally and
domestically. The 2009 Global Attitudes Survey measured
attitudes towards China, Russia and the EU. Turkish
attitudes towards them are comparable to the U.S.
favorability rating: 16 percent favorable for China; 13
percent favorable for Russia; and 22 percent favorable for
the EU. Turkish popular wisdom has it that the "only friend
of a Turk is a Turk" and this seems to be borne out by
polling here. In a March 2009 poll, the reputable Turkish
polling company Infakto asked respondents to identify
Turkey's best friend in the world. "None" came in first at
33 percent, followed by Azerbaijan at 5 percent and the U.S.
at 4 percent. This is not a public that seems to trust the
intentions of other actors on the international scene. The
Turkish educational system deserves much blame for this. The
primary and secondary school curriculum is Turkey-centric and
the formation of the republic narrative highly critical (to
be fair, justifiably to a large degree) of the efforts of the
great powers and neighbors to reduce Turkey's territory to a
fraction of its current size upon the dissolution of the
Ottoman Empire. Sabanci University political scientist Ali
Carkoglu argued to us that it would be surprising were any
graduate of a Turkish school to express a positive view of
the U.S. or any Western power given the aggressiveness with
which republican ideology is promoted and its antipathy to
the West. As he put it, an ill-educated Turk is far more
like to be positively disposed to the U.S.


4. (SBU) There's more to our low approval ratings, of
course, than just Turks' less-than-embracing attitude towards
other countries. Focus groups conducted by INR and R/RPR
over the last several months reinforce earlier findings in
identifying the perceived tone of U.S. interaction with

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Turkey and reliance on military force in addressing problems
as key factors driving Turks' overall negative image of the
U.S. R/RPR's late April focus groups in Istanbul and Ankara
produced a variety of assertions like these:

-- "What I see between the U.S. and Turkey is that the U.S.
is on a higher level than Turkey." "The U.S. dictates (to)
Turkey about which way the relations will be led";

-- "Actually there is an inherent problem with the power they
(the USG) hold. When you talk to the Americans, they don't
listen to get (convinced) by you. They don't listen to you
to be persuaded by you. I am talking about the policymakers."
"In the light of what they hear from you, they (make)
calculations how to make you fit into what they want to
happen";
-- "I do not know about the import-export figures, but when I
look at the relations between the U.S. and Turkey, the
relations are based on military power."

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U.S. Policies
--------------

5. (C) Particularly post-cold war, many Turks forget what
America has done for the country's independence and security,
and focus on a long litany of American policy moves, insults,
and slights, known seemingly by heart by every Turk: pulling
the Jupiter missiles in 1962; the 1964 "Johnson letter"
questioning NATO article V were Turkey to provoke Russia by
invading Cyprus; the post-1974 arms embargo; our policy over
decades regarding Saddam's Iraq (seen by the Turks as only
"an enemy of their enemy": the Kurds); and what they see as a
persistent tilt to Cyprus and Greece due to raw domestic U.S.
considerations. On this front, the most egregious issue that
keeps emotions boiling over is our seemingly almost annual
debate over whether to use "genocide" in describing the
events of 1915.


6. (SBU) If these enduring perceptions about the nature and
tone of U.S.-Turkish relations are major contributors to
Turks' low approval of the U.S., similarly low approval of
Americans seems to be driven largely by lack of direct
contact with Americans. As Guclu Atilgan of Infakto pointed
out, the vast majority of Turks participating in surveys have
had no direct contact with Americans. Their impressions of
Americans are formed by movies and television, and Turks'
approval of American popular culture is extremely low. In a
just released INR/R survey, for example, only 28 percent of
Turks expressed a positive opinion of American movies.


7. (SBU) Turkish approval ratings for the U.S. and Americans
in the just-released INR/R survey are higher than the Pew
poll numbers at 22 percent for the U.S. and 24 percent for
Americans. TNS PIAR conducted the Turkey surveys for both
Pew and INR/R. TNS PIAR pollster Zeynep Buyukazici
attributes the higher numbers for the INR/R poll, which was
conducted at the beginning of May, to a spike in Turkish
opinion of the U.S. in response to President Obama's visit.
The Pew polling was done a month later. According to
Buyukazici, such a dissipation of the effects of positive
messages over the course of a month is not unusual.


8. (SBU) President Obama's high ratings relative to the U.S.
and Americans would appear to be attributable at least in
part to the fact that he comes to the Turkish public with a
clean slate, without the baggage described above that weighs
down perceptions of the U.S. and Americans. An Infakto
February poll revealed that half of Turks (52 percent) have a
favorable opinion of the president and 39 percent have
confidence in him. INR/R focus groups conducted in Istanbul
in January saw participants describe the President as "a good
man," "sympathetic," and inclined to "solve problems through
diplomacy."

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Implications for the Mission's Response?
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9. (SBU) A quick fix for low approval ratings for the U.S.
and Americans isn't in the cards, though recent fluctuations
in attitudes demonstrate that progress can be made. Over the
ten-year history of Pew's measurement of Turkish attitudes
towards the U.S., favorable ratings began at 52 percent, then
fell to 30 percent in 2002, fell further to 15 percent in
2003, before rising again to 30 percent in 2004.
Emphasizing our enduring partnership with Turkey, our
commitment to treating Turkey with respect, and our
willingness to listen to Turkish views is something that we
will continue to do in word and deed.


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10. (SBU) The persistently low approval ratings for
Americans are a problem that we are addressing with support
from the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs (ECA).
We increased our Fulbright Commission allocation by $1
million this year via matching USG and GOT contributions of
$500,000. This 25 percent increase in the Commission's
budget will allow a significant increase in the number of
Turkish students going to the U.S. and American students
coming to Turkey. ECA also funded a $750,000 exchange
initiative -- "Young America/Young Turkey: A New
Relationship for a New Age" -- that is supporting three
two-way exchange programs targeting emerging political and
NGO leaders. We've invested an additional $250,000 in
English teaching. As the Pew poll demonstrates, there's an
obvious need for more exchange and English teaching programs
to address low Turkish approval of the U.S. and Americans.
INR/R polling has demonstrated the effectiveness of exchange
programs in that respondents with first-hand experience of
the U.S. are able to differentiate between their views of
U.S. policies they disagree with, the U.S. in general and
Americans. They rate the U.S. and Americans higher than the
policies with which they disagree. Such differentiation
doesn't take place with Turks who don't have firsthand U.S.
experience or know someone who has. In that light, we should
be encouraged that visa demand is surging despite poor
economic conditions (Istanbul is the third busiest visa
issuing post in Europe after London and Moscow).


11. (C) It is also worth noting that amid the significant
stress fractures of Turkey's current political landscape, the
USG is routinely blamed by all sides. Many secularists are
convinced that the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP)
is the creation of the USG, and that Washington bolsters and
funds the Fethullah Gulen movement. Core AKP supporters
question why the USG did not object more vigorously to last
year's closure case against the ruling party. AKP critics
complain that the USG has not been more vocal against the
prosecutor's tough tactics in the Ergenekon investigation.
Nationalists accuse the U.S. of launching and sustaining the
Kurdish insurgency, the PKK, as part of a diabolical plot to
create an independent Kurdistan. (COMMENT: Few Turks are
aware of how effective the USG's provision of real-time
intelligence to the Turkish military has been in the
counter-insurgency effort in northern Iraq. Because we have
deliberately kept a low profile on that initiative, the USG
gets no public credit for this major success. END COMMENT)
In addition, as one analyst has pointed out, the AKP often
appears reticent in public about its close ties to the USG,
possibly out of concern that such sentiment would not play
well with its segment of the electorate. Such distancing
does not lend itself to improved US ratings, when the
enduring image for much of the public is the Iraq war and its
aftermath. Such distancing is not limited to the AKP.
Sabanci University's Ali Carkoglu argues that Turkish elites
generally are loath to be perceived as too close to the U.S.,
and this applies to the Turkish military as much as any other
group. Political calculation is an element of this, of
course, but Carkoglu also stressed the power of republican
indoctrination in the schools, which encourages the belief
that the U.S. and other major international players are
powerful and interested only in pursuing their own interests
in their dealings with Turkey.

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Does It Matter?
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12. (C) The short answer is, yes. To the extent that we
have a "vision" for how a Middle Eastern majority Islamic
population state should "look," Turkey, with a basically
democratic system and tradition, fairly strong rule of law,
powerhouse modern industrial and financial sectors, and close
political, historical, and security links with the West,
meets it better than any other state. Scoring so low --
these days even compared to the traditionally hostile Arab
world in some polls -- both hurts our amour propre, and hurts
our bilateral cooperation. "Going along" with US-endorsed
initiatives, be it reopening of the Halki seminary, or
outreach to Kurds, is a "negative" in the domestic political
calculus, and thus initiatives we support suffer from yet
another disadvantage. On the other hand, Turkey, even more
than most democracies, turns over much of its foreign and
security policy (including domestic aspects) to elites who
operate behind closed doors. While these people share the
population's disdain for foreigners, especially powerful
ones, they are used to dealing with us, and have a fairly
reliable "the devil you know..." attitude. For those who
actually know America well, including many of the top MFA
people, FM Davutoglu, President Gul, and some of the
Generals, this pragmatic attitude is reinforced by real

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affection. Most elite Turks, for example, genuinely appear
to prefer interpersonal relations with sometimes blunt but
usually honest Americans to waffling European colleagues.
Moreover, Turks when making poll survey decisions might well
be mentally operating in a different context than when they
are making, for example, personal taste or purchase
decisions. Otherwise, the strong references to, and claimed
endorsements of, "American" standards or institutions in
selling products -- or in seeking educational opportunities
-- would presumably not be so ubiquitous.

Visit Ankara's Classified Web Site at
http://www.intelink.sgov.gov/wiki/Portal:Turk ey

JEFFREY