ISTANBUL, Turkey - While the government in Turkey has come under intense criticism at home and abroad in recent weeks over its reluctance to come to the aid of Kurds defending the Syrian town of Kobane against Islamic State jihadists, it seems the majority of the country may actually agree with Ankara’s approach.
That is according to a new survey by Turkish pollster MetroPOLL, which found that some 56 percent of Turks were against Turkey allowing “all kinds” of support to reach Kurdish fighters in Kobane, compared with less than a third who favoured giving support.
Images of Turkish tanks standing by idly last month while outgunned Syrian Kurdish forces just across the border struggled to fend off a siege by Islamic State, or ISIS, outraged Turkey’s own Kurds and turned into a public relations disaster for Ankara around the world. Dozens of people were killed in riots in Kurdish cities over the government’s stance.
With the predominantly Kurdish town looking like it would fall to the jihadists, Washington, which had already been conducting air strikes against ISIS around the town, then air dropped weapons and supplies to the beleaguered fighters. In an about turn, Ankara then announced the following day it would give passage to Iraqi Kurdistan peshmerga to help defend Kobane.
Those fighters have now joined their kinsmen in Kobane, however, Turkish leaders have made no secret of their disapproval in aiding the town’s Kurds. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has upped his rhetoric against the West, accusing it of “double standards” by focusing on Kobane and said Washington was wrong to support the Kurdish militias.
The poll, entitled ‘Turkey’s Pulse October 2014’, which measures public sentiment towards domestic and foreign policy, found that 55.9 percent of the 2,752 respondents did not want Turkey to facilitate support to Kobane, while 32.2 percent believed it should.
Turkey is wary of helping the Kurds across its border because of their close links to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) in Turkey. Erdogan has even compared the Kurdish groups there to ISIS, angering Kurds on both sides of the frontier. That view, may however, also ring true with many Turks.
MetroPOLL found that while more than 85 percent of Turks considered both ISIS and PKK as dangerous for Turkey, 43.7 percent said the Kurdish militants were more dangerous than ISIS, compared to 41.6 percent who thought the jihadists posed a bigger danger.
Kurdish riots as well as a series of recent killings of Turkish soldiers and subsequent military retaliation has threatened to derail a fragile peace process between Ankara and the PKK, despite rhetoric on both sides aimed at keeping negotiations on track.
Many Turks still balk at the notion of talking to the PKK, which has waged an insurgency against the state since 1984 that has cost some 40,000 lives, most of them Kurds. The PKK is designated a terrorist group by Ankara, Washington and the European Union.
The poll found that just under 50 percent of respondents believed the peace process was unsuccessful compared to just under 40 percent who believed it would succeed.
In general, just over half of Turks said the country was heading in a worse direction, compared to some 43 percent a month earlier, and around 34 percent of Turks thought Turkey was headed in the right direction versus 43 percent in September.
“Turkey is tense both in terms of domestic policy and in terms of foreign policy. Street violence over the past month has added to longstanding social and political polarisation. A stalled peace process could thrust Turkey into a fresh spiral of violence,” wrote Ozer Sencar, General Director of MetroPOLL.
“If the peace process ends, public protests and violent demonstrations like those started over Kobane could become a common scene in Turkey.”
