Launch Event of Transatlantic Trends 2013 Report at TEPAV The meeting held to present the results of the survey that measures public opinion in the US, Europe and Turkey was attended by the US and EU Ambassadors.

ANKARA – The 2013 results of the annual Transatlantic Trends Survey carried out by the German Marshall Fund of United States (GMF) were released with a meeting at TEPAV on Wednesday, 18 September.

Following the opening addresses by H.E. Ambassador Francis Ricciardone, U.S. Ambassador to Turkey and H.E. Ambassador Jean Maurice Ripert, Head of EU Delegation in Turkey, TEPAV European Union (EU) Institute Director made a brief assessment on the survey results. She stressed that the public opinion in the US, Europe and Turkey had doubts about a military intervention in Syria whereas they supported democratization in the MENA region.

Key findings …

Key findings of the survey were presented by Özgür Ünlühisarcıklı, Director of the Ankara Office of the German Marshall Fund of the United States. Ünlühisarcıklı said that interviews in Turkey were conducted in June. He summarized the key findings among others:

- “38 percent of participants think that Turkey should act alone on international matters while 21 percent believe that Turkey should cooperate with the EU.

- 72 percent of the respondents said that Turkey should stay out of the Syria conflict completely while 21 percent supported intervention.

- 53 percent of the respondents stated that they disapproved the way US president Obama’s way of handling international policies.

- With a 1 percentage-point increase, 29 percent of Turks surveyed said that NATO was essential to Turkey while a same proportion said it was no longer essential. In the EU and the US, 58 and 55 percent of the respondents considered NATO essential, respectively.

- Concerning Turkey’s EU membership, 44 percent of the respondents from Turkey were in favor while the rate for Europeans was 20 percent. 33 percent of Europeans believe that Turkey’s membership would be a bad thing, 37 percent believes it would be neither good nor bad.

- 51 percent of Turks surveyed supported international policies of Turkey whereas 41 percent of Americans and 50 percent of Europeans approved their own governments’ international policies.”

The findings of the survey were assessed by Prof. Dr. Bülent Aras, Chairman of the Turkish Foreign Ministry’s Strategic Research Center as well as US and EU Ambassadors.

US Ambassador: “NATO is still essential…”

US Ambassador Francis Ricciardone stated that public opinion on Syria or other issue or on government policies or leaders could change in time whereas it was more difficult to change the deeper core identity. Talking about Turkey’s public, transatlantic identity and mutual relations from this perspective, Ricciardone upon a question from the audience drew attention to the fact that NATO was still deemed essential.

Ambassador Ripert: “Small decrease in support for Turkey”

H.E. Ambassador Jean Maurice Ripert, Head of EU Delegation in Turkey, highlighted that cooperation with the EU in international matters was the second most supported option among participants from Turkey and said that the proportion of Turks which have a positive vision on the EU membership decreased slightly since last year. Pointing at the rate of support across Europe for Turkey’s membership, he stated that there was more to be done on public opinion in the EU concerning Turkey’s accession and that advances concerning a new constitution and the address on Kurdish demands could have a significant positive impact on European public support for Turkey.

The meeting ended after the questions and contributions from the audience.

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