Turkey's anti-government protesters are young, libertarian and secular, but do not belong to a political party, a new online poll reveals. Many joined the protests in anger at Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's authoritarian leadership style.

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A majority of the protesters at Istanbul's Taksim Gezi Park do not feel close to any political party and say Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's authoritarian leadership style was responsible for sparking the nationwide protests, according to a recent online survey.

Some 70% of the protesters said they were not allied to a political party while only 15.3% said they had a party affiliation, according to a June 3-4 poll by Esra Ercan Bilgiç and Zehra Kafkaslı, two academics from Istanbul Bilgi University.

Most of the protesters who completed the survey, 81.2%, defined themselves as “libertarian” while a total of 64.5% of respondents defined themselves as “secular”.

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