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Cablegate: The Use and Abuse of Turkish Polls

This record is a partial extract of the original cable. The full text of the original cable is not available.

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 03 ANKARA 004888

SIPDIS

E.O. 12958: DECL: 08/22/2025
TAGS: PGOV PREL PINS TU
SUBJECT: THE USE AND ABUSE OF TURKISH POLLS

REF: 2003 ANKARA 004319

Classified By: POLCOUNS John Kunstadter; E.O. 12958, reasons 1.4 (b,d)


1. Summary. Turkish polls have had a tendency inaccurately
to forecast the outcome of Turkish national elections because
the majority of Turkish survey firms do not follow the basic
requirements for conducting a scientific poll. Nevertheless,
Turkish elites --- including leaders in the governing AKP ---
pay close attention to the results and use them to shape
their political calculations and behavior. End Summary.

2. (C) Turkish polls have had a tendency inaccurately to
forecast the outcome of Turkish national elections. In 1999,
for example, most of the Turkish polling firms correctly
predicted that DSP would win the plurality of the vote, but
only one polling firm correctly predicted that
ultranationalist MHP would receive nearly one-fifth of the
vote and become the second largest party in parliament. In
2002, most polls correctly predicted that AKP would win the
plurality of the vote, but they failed to accurately forecast
the size of AKP,s victory.


-------------------------------------
HOW TO CONDUCT AN UNSCIENTIFIC SURVEY
-------------------------------------

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3. (C) One reasons Turkish polling results are often
unreliable is that political parties sometimes commission
polls for propaganda purposes, not objective analysis. For
example, Ankara mayor Gocek,s head advisor Murat Dogru
(strictly protect) told POLOFF that prior to the November
2002 election, Gocek,s small Democratic Party (DP)
commissioned a poll indicating that DP would receive around
20 percent of the vote and secure second place in the
election. In reality, the party received less than 1 percent
of the vote and Gocek later abandoned the DP to join AKP.

4. (C) The more fundamental problem, however, is that the
majority of Turkish survey firms do not follow the basic
requirements for conducting a scientific poll. For a poll to
be scientific, every member of the population to be surveyed
(e.g. all Turkish citizens over the age of 18) must have an
equal chance of being included in the sample.

5. (C) The majority of Turkish firms, however, violate this
basic tenet by conducting their surveys in only a handful of
pre-selected (not randomly selected) provinces. Turkish
firms also use a quota system to select interviewees at the
block and household level that can seriously bias their
results. Most Turkish polls, moreover, focus on urban-only
samples and when the firms try to include rural residents
they implement a methodology that simply replaces one form of
error with another.

6. (C) Ibrahim Uslu of the Ankara Social Research Center
(ANAR) and Ozer Sencar of Metropoll discussed their firms
polling methodologies with POLOFFs. Uslu and Sencar told us
that their firms follow a methodology prescribed by the
Turkish State Statistical Institute (DIE). They also
suggested that the vast majority of Turkish polling firms
follow variations on the same basic methodology. (Comment:
Their assertion is consistent with the fact that most of the
firms have made similar bad predictions in recent elections.
End Comment.)

7. (C) The methodology employed by most Turkish firms was
devised by the DIE. There are 81 provinces in Turkey, but
DIE has identified thirteen "representative" provinces across
Turkey and recommends that Turkish polling firms conduct
surveys in these thirteen regions. Sencer also told us that
DIE had a list of twenty-five "representative" provinces
which firms can use to conduct "more accurate" surveys.
(Comment: The fact that the DIE created a second, "more
accurate" set of provinces raises red flags regarding this
whole unscientific procedure. End Comment.) According to
Uslu and Sencar, DIE has conducted extensive research and
concluded that these provinces are similar to neighboring
provinces and can be used as proxies to represent the entire
region. This step violates the basic requirement for a
scientific survey, i.e. that all individuals in the
population have an equal chance of being selected for the
survey. (Comment: Moreover, even if these thirteen or
twenty-five provinces were representative of their
neighboring provinces at one point in time, migration and
variations in economic development have altered their
representativeness over time. End Comment.)

8. (C) Uslu and Sencar were unable or unwilling to explain to
POLOFFs how their firms constructed a methodology randomly to
select individuals within the thirteen "representative"
provinces. Uslu and Sencar, moreover, told POLOFFs that
their firms use a quota system to select individuals within
households. ANAR,s interviewers are required to conduct
interviews that satisfy a preset age, gender, past voting
preference, and education quota. Metropoll uses an age and
gender quota and then weights the data to correct for biases
in past voting preferences. Uslu and Sencar also admitted
that their standard polls only interview urban respondents,
although they have also conducted rural polls. (Comment: We
suspect they have no methodology at the sub-provincial level
and their interviewers simply wander around the province,s
capital city unscientifically conducting interviews until
they fill their preset quota. End Comment.)


----------------------------
SCIENTIFIC POLLING IN TURKEY
----------------------------
9. (C) There are a few firms, mostly based in Istanbul, that
conduct scientific polls. For example, Infakto Research ---
a firm co-founded in 2003 by Emre Erdogan, a well-trained PhD
social scientist --- conducts scientific surveys. Erdogan
told POLOFF that his firm,s polls use stratified random
samples, face-to-face interviews, and cover both urban and
rural areas. Erdogan showed us documentation that
corroborated his assertion.


----------------------------
ANAR'S RELATIONSHIP WITH AKP
----------------------------

10. (C) Uslu reconfirmed that ANAR (REFTEL) conducts surveys
for the governing Justice and Development Party (AKP). State
Minister Dr. Besir Atalay, an Islamist former sociology
professor and university rector (dismissed from his
rectorship of Kirikkale University for pursuing Islamist
policies), is the founder of ANAR and Foreign Minister Gul
had an office in ANAR,s building prior to the formation of
the AKP. Senior AKP leaders pay close attention to ANAR,s
polls. POLOFFs have repeatedly seen notebooks with ANAR,s
logo on them sitting on AKP MPs, and senior officials,
desks and bookshelves. On more than one occasion, moreover,
AKP leaders have read from these ANAR notebooks, quoting
polling data to POLOFFs in an effort to prove a certain
political point.

11. (C) Uslu told us that ANAR initially conducted monthly
polls for AKP, but after a few years of very similar results,
the party has decided to cut back to bimonthly polls.
Recently, AKP has asked ANAR to conduct only quarterly polls
using its normal methodology, but it has also requested that
ANAR supplement this with semiannual "rural" polls. The
methodology behind ANAR,s rural poll, unfortunately, is just
as unscientific as its normal urban-only surveys. They use
ten of the same thirteen "representative regions" and they
simply replace Ankara, Izmir, and Istanbul with neighboring
provinces. They then apply the same methodology, but require
their interviewers to fill their quotas outside the
boundaries of the provincial capitals.


---------------------------------
TURKISH ELTIES AND PUBLIC OPINION
---------------------------------

12. (C) As elites do in other countries, Turkish elites
appear to pay significant attention to public opinion polls.
In addition to AKP, POLOFFs have been in meetings with ANAP,
DSP, DYP, MHP, and SHP leaders who refer to public opinion
polls when discussing public policies and political
strategies. Journalists and newspaper columnists regularly
refer to public opinion polls in their articles. Moreover,
Turkish civil society organizations, like the pro-EU ARI
Movement and the Liberal Thinking Association (LDT), have
commissioned public opinion polls.

13. (C) Turkish political elites do not blindly follow the
results of public opinion polls. Instead, they use polling
results to help them judge the relative popularity
(influence) of political leader; to estimate their party's
prospects for electoral success; to inform the development of
their political strategy and set a policy agenda; and to
gauge how well they are marketing their party and policy
positions.


--------------------------------------------- ----
WHAT WE CAN LEARN FROM TURKEY'S POLLING COMMUNITY
--------------------------------------------- ----

14. (C) Comment. AKP's decision to cut back on the number
of polls suggests that they are unlikely to call for early
elections anytime soon: it would be odd to reduce polling
efforts prior to an election. However, AKP'S decision to
add two "rural" polls each year suggests that AKP is starting
to worry about the level of its support in rural Anatolian
farming communities.

15. (C) Comment, continued. AKP's continued patronage of
ANAR despite the obvious errors in ANAR's methodology
reveals a lack of expertise or inclination to carefully
monitor how ANAR is doing its work. This is disturbing
because we know that AKP's leaders pay close attention to
ANAR's poll results. Moreover, this is part of a larger
pattern plaguing AKP in a variety of technical fields besides
polling. AKP's leadership lacks the time, energy, ability,
technical know-how, or inclination to engage in rigorous
analysis of the advice it receives from its friends and
so-called experts.

16. (C) Comment, continued. The poor state of the Turkish
polling community is also illustrative of larger problems
within Turkish society, e.g. 1) an over reliance and
acceptance of state-directed solutions to complex scientific
problems and 2) a desire to cut corners by replacing a
tried-and-true method with a cheap, quick, and easy
alternative.

17. (C) Comment, continued. Until more Turkish firms follow
Infakto,s example and conduct scientific surveys, readers of
Turkish polls should be skeptical of the results.
Nonetheless, Turkish polling results can be useful if
interpreted with an extra degree of caution. At a minimum,
these polls are important because many Turkish politicians,
academics, journalists, and other elites pay close attention
to the results. End Comment.

MCELDOWNEY

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