ANKARA: Economic issues ranked as the most important problem for half of Turks.
A total of 33.1 percent of those polled said unemployment ranks as Turkey’s most important problem. “This is the highest percentage I have seen for long time,” said Ali Çarkoğlu, who has been conducting similar surveys for the past two decades.
For 10.7 percent of those polled, the most important problem was poverty, while 8.2 percent said it was economic instability.
When the three inputs are combined, the outcome shows that half of Turks believe economic issues are the most important problem in Turkey, said Çarkoğlu of Koç University, who conducted the survey together with Ersin Kalaycıoğlu of Sabancı University and Eric Nisbet of Ohio University.
Some 10.4 percent ranked terrorism and national security, while 6.4 percent ranked the Kurdish problem as the most important problem in Turkey.
Surprisingly, only 3.2 percent ranked the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), Turkey’s foreign policy and Syria as the country’s most important problem. In contrast, some 34.9 percent said the issue was the most important one currently facing the world.
The issue will remain the world’s most important issue in the future as well, according to the results.
Also what Turks see as relatively less of a problem currently for the country appears as an important issue in their projections for the future, as 12.9 percent of those polled ranked ISIL, foreign policy and Syria as the most important problem that awaits the nation in the future.
Strikingly, environmental issues, such as water shortages and energy, rank last in terms of importance at present, with only 0.3 percent saying it was Turkey’s biggest problem at the moment.
