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Over one-third of Turks see Israel as a threat to Turkey: survey

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More than one-third of Turks perceive Israel to be the country that poses the biggest threat to Turkey, according to the results of a recent survey conducted by the Ankara-based PanoramaTR research company.

The survey, included in a report titled “Democracy and Security,” which PanoramaTR released earlier this week, aims to examine the relationship between democracy and security in Turkey using concrete data and to understand how perceptions of security and democracy are reflected in politics and voter behavior.

The survey was conducted with the participation of 2,093 people January 9-16.

When participants were asked which country they perceive as the biggest threat to Turkey, over one-third — 36.9 percent — said the biggest threat is Israel, followed by the United States (31.4 percent), Syria (6.3 percent), Russia (4.9 percent), Iran (4.6 percent), Greece (2 percent), China (0.8 percent) and other countries (13.3 percent).

The belief that Israel is the biggest threat to Turkey is widespread among all voter groups, except for the nationalist opposition İYİ (Good) Party, according to the survey, with İYİ supporters considering the US to be the biggest threat (46.3 percent), outnumbering those who consider Israel the biggest threat (20.4 percent).

Last year Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan claimed on several occasions that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government harbored ambitions that include the capture of Anatolia as part of a “Greater Israel,” warning of a war between the two states.

“The Israeli leadership acting with the delirium of the promised land and with a purely religious fanaticism will set its sights on our homeland after Palestine and Lebanon,” Erdoğan said.

Shortly after, Israeli President Isaac Herzog responded to Erdoğan’s claims, stating that Israel has no intention of taking military action against Turkey.

Anti-Israel sentiment has been running high in Turkey since Israel launched its military campaign in Gaza following the Hamas attack on Israel in 2023 that resulted in the death of 1,206 people and the taking of some 250 hostages.

Erdoğan, who has long marketed himself in the Muslim world as a champion of Palestinian rights and a fierce critic of Israel, has repeatedly accused Israel of being a “terrorist state” and of committing “genocide” due to Israel’s 15-month long attacks on the Palestinian enclave.

Following a ceasefire reached by Israel and Hamas last month, authorities in Gaza have  revised the death toll in the Palestinian enclave upwards to 61,709 since October 7, 2023, after accounting for at least 14,000 people believed to be missing or buried under the rubble.

Foreign powers

According to the report, the data show that Turkish society generally believes foreign powers have an influence on politics and that it has a strong distrust of global powers.

“Therefore, perceptions of external threats should be considered not only in the context of international relations but also as a significant element of polarization, mobilization and identity politics in domestic politics,” the report added, noting that foreign policy rhetoric plays a decisive role in both voter behavior and the general political attitudes of society.

The Turkish government frequently accuses some “foreign powers” of being behind a wide range of social and economic problems in the country, which, according to many, is a tactic to mask its own failures.

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