Five years after September 11 2001, the image of the United States has not recovered from its steep decline after the war in Iraq, the Transatlantic Trends 2006 survey said.

Decline was steepest in Germany, which showed 43 per cent of support, down from 68 per cent in 2002.

The US-Germany cooling became even clearer on September 13 when the head of the German investigation said that US policy in Iraq had increased the terrorist threat around the world. German support for NATO has fallen as well, as has support for the North Atlantic alliance in Europe in general.

Italy, Poland and Turkey, countries traditionally perceived as strong supporters of NATO, also show reduced figures of support. This probably explains a certain isolationist trend among Americans that the study identified.

The biggest twist, however, comes from Turkey. The EU candidate has been cooling toward Europe and the US and warming toward Iran since 2004. On a 100-point thermometer scale, Turkish warmth toward the US declined from 28 degrees in 2002 to 20 in 2006, and toward the EU from 52 degrees to 45. Elif Shafak, the Turkish writer accused of insulting Turkish national identity in a book about Turkish genocide against Armenians, warned about that trend as well. On September 13, she said that the case against her and other cases like hers could actually stop Turkey’s negotiations with the EU. 

And deepen Turkish orientation toward the Muslim world that the study identified as well. Since 2004, Turkish warmth toward Iran rose from 34 degrees to 43. As many as 56 per cent of Turkish people, when asked if they minded Iran’s nuclear programme, said no.

“If I was asked to do that a month ago, I would not have been able to predict such a result,” said the director of the Centre for Liberal Studies in Bulgaria, Ivan Krustev.

For the first time, this year Bulgaria and Romania were included in the Transatlantic survey as well.

The surprise coming from the Bulgarians, at least to Krustev, is that Bulgarians generally hold opinions consistent with the line of EU foreign policy, he said. At the same time, however, Bulgarians tend to support Euro-isolationist views in the line of “the world should leave the EU at peace”, rather than “the EU should try to fix the world”, Krustev said. Bulgarians see EU membership more as a way to escape the problems of the world than a chance to solve them, he said.

In that, their opinions are closer to those of Slovakia than those of other new and future EU members like Poland and Romania. The new and future EU members are not a coherent block anyway, even if their overall views on the EU and the United States do not differ significantly from EU averages, the study said.

Seventy per cent of Romanians and 66 per cent of Poles support EU global leadership and in that are closer to the 76 per cent EU average than are Bulgaria and Slovakia. Only 56 per cent of Bulgarians and 50 per cent of Slovakians support strong EU leadership, and thus move away from the EU trend to seek larger involvement in world affairs. European support for a new EU foreign minister – one of the key reforms put forth in the proposed constitutional treaty – is at a high 65 per cent despite the French and Dutch EU “No” to the constitution.

And, contrary to public concerns about enlargement fatigue, Europeans also see positive benefits from enlargement, which they connect with the importance of encouraging democracy – a trend that will increasingly find Europeans on the more active side, as opposed to US citizens, researchers said.

When it comes to support for the policies of George W Bush, Bulgaria and Slovakia are closer to the eight per cent EU average with their 20 and two per cent, respectively, of support than are Poland and Romania, which score 40 and 42 per cent. Poles and Romanians, in fact, show the greatest support of the US of all 13 surveyed countries.
Another peculiarity of Bulgarians is that they seem to be more interested in what will be happening to Bulgaria in an EU context, rather than what their and their country’s position in the world should be, Krustev said.

For example, Bulgarians know little about the Bulgarian contingents in Iraq and Afghanistan, and a lot about the case against the Bulgarian nurses in Libya. This means that Bulgarian opinions on foreign policy are still a reflex rather than a consciously taken position, he said.

Bulgarians also seem unable to form opinions as to whether Turkey’s membership in the EU would be a good or a bad thing, Krustev said.

Most Bulgarians do not see Iraq as a threat, and evidence of that is the marginalisation of the issue in Bulgarian media, Krustev said.

What is most striking, however, is the huge percentage of I-don’t-know and I-can’t-answer responses. Thirty-one per cent of Bulgarians could not answer if the US and the EU have improved relations, even if that was a matter of general knowledge, Krustev said. This means that a third of Bulgarians have not thought on the issue at all.

Transatlantic Trends is among the most influential public opinion polls. It has been conducted since 2002 and is a project of the German Marshall Fund of the United States and the Compagnia di San Paolo. Additional support comes from the Fundacao Luso-American, Fundacion BBVA, and the Tipping Point Foundation (Bulgarian).