In a poll that many would find surprising, the majority of Turks want the crisis with Greece to be resolved diplomatically and not militarily.
According to the survey published by Ankara-based polling company MetroPoll on Saturday, 59.7% of those surveyed want a diplomatic end to East Mediterranean issue.
A total of 31.7% of those surveyed wanted Turkey to use military force if necessary while 8.6% had no answer as to how to resolve the issue.
Unsurprisingly, of those who supported a military solution, 40.5% were supporters of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan belongs to.
50% of those who support a military option came from the from the far-right Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), a junior coalition ally of the AKP.
Pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) voters constituted the lowest support for the military solution at only eight percent, followed by main opposition secularist Republican People’s Party (CHP), at 20.9 percent, Ahval reported.
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The low support for the military option is unsurprising considering a separate poll found that Greeks are more willing to go to war with Turkey, compared to Turks willing to go to war with Greece, as previously reported by Greek City Times.
Kapa Research analyzed several issues relating to Greek-Turkish relations and found that Turks are more unwilling to go to war than Greeks, an interesting find considering Turkey is the harbinger of aggression in the East Mediterranean and the AKP-MHP coalition endless threaten war.
On the issue of the exploitation of natural resources in the Eastern Mediterranean, the positions are diametrically opposed. Greeks (91%) consider that research carried out by Turkish ships in the region violate international law and have become a factor of instability in the region. 81% of Turks say that their country has rights in the Aegean and the Eastern Mediterranean and properly conducts exploration for gas and oil fields.
In the hypothetical scenario, where things get worse and if at some point the Greek and Turkish government considers that the sovereign rights of Greece/Turkey are being obstructed or violated, both nationalities want to exhaust the possibilities of dialogue instead of war. However, the inhabitants of Greece are more prepared for military use (46%) than Turks (35%).
