<P class=blog>Columnist Burak Bekdil of Turkish Daily News in his article yesterday, questioned the logic behind statistics. He wrote that according to a nine-country poll conducted by Angus Reid Strategies, two-thirds of adults in Turkey hold an unfavorable opinion about the United States and the percentage of Turks who think the American state is a danger to world peace (66%) was highest among the nine countries surveyed. <P class=blog>The same survey also revealed that only 1% of Turks think Iran is a global security threat, and 4 % see Al-Qaeda as a global menace. Bekdil asks “Do Turks have terribly confused minds? How can they believe the U.S. to be a far bigger threat than a terrorist organization that bombed Istanbul a few years ago, killing over 60 people?” <P class=blog>He continues to wonder, “How can it be that 47% of the people vote for a party that is friendly to the U.S. yet 66% of the same people see that country as biggest security threat? The explanation must be ‘sentimental thinking in reaction to U.S. policies combined with unusual tolerance to the incumbent AKP government’. <P class=blog>Bekdil explains the possible reasons why Iran is not seen as a threat by the fact that as Iran is co-Muslim and that there is admiration in Turkey for anyone who can stand up against America that Turks are so angry with.<P class=blog>Source: Turkish Daily News, December 12, 2007