A significant percentage of the participants in a recent poll consider Israel as the biggest threat to the Middle East. File photo shows an Israeli warplane.

According to a report by Turkey’s Hurriyet daily, the Turkish Economic and Social Studies Foundation (TESEV) and Friedrich Ebert Stiftung conducted the survey between August 3 and August 28 in 16 countries and interviewed 2,800 people.

The chairman of the TESEV Foreign Policy Program, Mensur Akgun, said, “Forty-six percent of the participants think the biggest threat for the Middle East comes from Israel, 21 percent think it is from the US.”

The results of the survey, called “The perception of Turkey in the Middle East,” were published on Thursday.

The poll also showed that the positive outlook toward Turkey in the Middle East dropped from 78 percent in the 2011 edition of the survey to 69 percent in 2012.

Akgun also stated that the participants “consider Saudi Arabia the strongest economic power and Iran the strongest military power” in the region.

The TESEV official added that 42 percent of the participants in the 2012 poll think Turkey “had a positive impact” on the Islamic Awakening, “however this percentage was 56 percent in 2011.”

MKA/HSN

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