Feb 4, 2015

What do Turks think about the attack on the Paris headquarters of the French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo? Do they believe that there is a new Western “crusade” against the Muslim world? How many Turks want to preserve a secular republic? Metropoll, a prominent Ankara-based polling company, has asked Turks these questions. Its study, conducted through interviews of a statistically representative 2,579 individuals from 28 provinces, turned up intriguing results.

Titled “Religion, Violence and Freedom,” the survey first focuses on Turkish perceptions of the attack on Charlie Hebdo. Only 16% of respondents defined the incident solely as “an attack on freedom of speech,” arguably the dominant view in the West. A much larger portion, 56%, emphasized that it was wrong for Charlie Hebdo to insult the Prophet Muhammad, but that it was also wrong to murder its journalists. The most worrying response was agreed to by some 20% of participants, who believe the satirists of the prophet “got the response that they deserved.” Among voters of the governing Justice and Development Party (AKP), this percentage rose to 26%. Also among AKP voters, however, 61% agreed that “they insulted the prophet, but it was wrong to kill them.”

A second question about the attack on Charlie Hebdo was “Who really did it?” Only 31% of participants thought “radical Islamists” were responsible. Among AKP voters, the number was even lower, at 18%. The most popular answer was “foreign intelligence services,” which typically implies the CIA, Mossad and the like. Of all participants, 44% opted for this conspiratory theory, which was even more popular among AKP voters, at 56%. This finding confirms the overwhelming acceptance of conspiracy theories in Turkey.

The religious perspective discerned from the survey would be “moderate” Islam, in the sense of disapproving of terrorism in the name of Islam. This perspective, however, does not include accepting that the act of terrorism committed in Paris was carried out by radical Islamists, but instead puts the blame on Western conspirators seeking to defame Islam by organizing false flag operations. Metropoll’s commentary on the survey results states that this “tendency to explain the visible with the invisible” is a sign of “detachment from reality.”

A third question about the Paris murders highlights this element in Turkish society: “Who was the real victim?” Only 22% of all participants believed that the murdered satirists were “the real victims,” while 24% believed the real victims were Muslims living in Europe. A much larger portion, 43%, defined the “real victim” as “the Islamic world.” Among AKP voters, this percentage rose to 55%. As the Metropoll’s commentary observed, “conspiracy theory makes it impossible to see the actual victims.”