Most Turks oppose direct intervention by their country in neighboring Syria, a Turkish opinion poll revealed Friday, as the escalating conflict threatens to become outright civil war.

Fifty-seven percent said they were against Turkey intervening in Syria, while 11.7 percent said they were for a military confrontation with the Damascus regime, according to the poll sponsored by an Istanbul-based think-tank, the Centre for Economic and Foreign Policy Studies (EDAM).

Among those who opposed direct intervention, 41.1 percent said Turkey should not interfere in any way, while the remaining 15.9 percent said they supported the current government-led political and diplomatic policies toward Syria.

The survey was conducted between May 5 and June 5 among a representative sample of 1,500 people across the country.

Turkey’s government, a former ally of Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad, broke with Damascus after its calls on the regime to stop bloody crackdown on popular dissent went unheeded.

Turkey now shelters 30,800 Syrians after successive waves of refugees fled across the border throughout the year to escape the regime’s crackdown on their hometowns, particularly in northwestern regions situated close to the Turkish border.

Monitors say at least 14,400 Syrians have been killed in the 15-month uprising against Assad and the toll grows daily despite a ceasefire plan that should have gone into effect from April 12.

-AFP/NOW Lebanon

There are increasing calls for international intervention in Syria after this weekend’s massacre in Houla, where Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s forces murdered more than 100 civilians. Obstacles to intervention remain, however, especially concern that the opposition to Assad’s regime is dominated by religious fundamentalists. Until recently, for example, the Syrian National Council, a group of exiled opponents of the regime, was led by Burhan Ghalioun, whose unwillingness to counter the Muslim Brotherhood was widely viewed in the West as a troubling sign of Islamist influence.

But a confidential survey of opposition activists living in Syria reveals that Islamists are only a minority among them. Domestic opponents of Assad, the survey indicates, look to Turkey as a model for Syrian governance — and even widely admire the United States.

Pechter Polls, which conducts opinion surveys in tough spots in the Middle East, Africa and Asia, completed the Syria opposition poll in December 2011. Respondents were contacted over a secure Skype connection by someone they could trust — all native Syrians — who asked them to fill out a short questionnaire anonymously in Arabic. Interviewers were selected from different social and political groups to ensure that respondents reflected a rough cross-section of overall opposition attitudes. To ensure confidentiality, the online survey could be accessed only through a series of proxy servers, bypassing the regime-controlled Internet.

Given the survey’s unusual security requirements, respondents were selected by a referral (or “controlled snowball”) technique, rather than in a purely random fashion. To be as representative as possible, the survey employed five different starting points for independent referral chains, all operating from different locations. The resulting sample consisted of 186 individuals in Syria identified as either opposition activists themselves (two-thirds of the total) or in contact with the opposition.

What do these “inside” opposition supporters believe? Only about one-third expressed a favorable opinion of the Muslim Brotherhood. Almost half voiced a negative view, and the remainder were neutral. On this question, no significant differences emerged across regions.

Most of the survey’s questions asked, “On a scale of 1 to 7, where 1 means the most negative and 7 the most positive, how would you rate your opinion of X?” Answers of 1 to 3 were considered negative, 4 as neutral, and 5 to 7 as positive.

While many respondents supported religious values in public life, only a small fraction strongly favored Shariah law, clerical influence in government, or heavy emphasis on Islamic education. A large majority (73%) said it was “important for the new Syrian government to protect the rights of Christians.” Only 20% said that religious leaders have a great influence on their political views.

This broad rejection of Islamic fundamentalism was also reflected in the respondents’ views on government. The poll asked each respondent what country he or she would “like to see Syria emulate politically,” and which countries the respondent “would like to see Syria emulate economically.” The poll listed 12 countries, each with a scale of 1 to 7. Just 5% had even a mildly positive view of Saudi Arabia as a political model. In contrast, 82% gave Turkey a favorable rating as both a political and economic model (including over 40% extremely favorable). The U.S. earned 69% favorable ratings as a political model, with France, Germany and Britain close behind. Tunisia rated only 37% and Egypt 22%.

Iran was rated lowest of any country included in the survey, including Russia and China: Not even 2% of respondents had positive views of Iran as a political model. Fully 90% expressed an unfavorable view of Hezbollah, including 78% with the most negative possible attitude.

One of the surprises in the results is the scope of the opposition’s network inside Damascus, despite their difficulties in demonstrating publicly. One-third of the respondents, whether activists or sympathizers, said they live in the Syrian capital. (To protect their privacy, the survey did not ask for more precise identification.)

This “inside” opposition is well-educated, with just over half identifying as college graduates. The ratio of male to female respondents was approximately 3 to 1, and 86% were Sunni Arab.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, they were ambivalent about Syrian Kurdish demands for “political decentralization” (like autonomy). Views of “Kurdish parties” were evenly divided among negative, neutral and positive. (Such feelings are evidently mutual: In the six months since the survey was completed, Syrian Kurdish organizations have increasingly decided to go their own way, separate from the other opposition groups.)

Based on a statistical analysis of the survey, most secularists among the respondents prefer weak central government, presumably as a way to safeguard their personal freedoms. On the other hand, the one-third of respondents who support the Muslim Brotherhood also tend to have a favorable view of Hamas, despite the latter movement’s previous association with the Assad regime.

The survey demonstrates that the core of the Syrian opposition inside the country is not made up of the Muslim Brotherhood or other fundamentalist forces, and certainly not of al Qaeda or other jihadi organizations. To be sure, a revolution started by secularists could pave the way for Islamists to win elections, as has occurred in Egypt. But the Syrian opposition is solidly favorable to the U.S. and overwhelmingly negative toward both Hezbollah and Iran.

David Pollock is the Kaufman fellow at The Washington Institute and a consultant to Pechter Polls.

Vote results on whether Assad should be on Time’s 100 list: “51.27% - Definitely, 48.73% - No Way.” PATHETIC! time.com/time/specials/… #Syria

— Syrian Freedom (@FreeingSyria) April 6, 2012

By Charlotte McDonald BBC News

An opinion poll was widely reported last month as evidence that 55% of Syrians think President Bashar al-Assad should not resign. But does the claim stand up to scrutiny?

The world is watching Syria, where every day there are new scenes of horror as the violence between protesters and the regime’s security forces continues.

Against this backdrop, some commentators have picked up on a striking statistic - that 55% of Syrians want President Assad to stay in power.

In a column in the UK’s Guardian newspaper, the statistic was used to suggest that the Western media was mis-reporting the situation in Syria, suppressing “inconvenient facts” for the purposes of propaganda.

The statistic has been reported widely elsewhere, from the New York Times, to Al Jazeera (in Arabic) Iranian owned Press TV, and Syrian news sites.

(Mis)interpreting data

So what was this poll and who carried it out?

It was an internet survey of the Arab world by YouGov Siraj in December. It covered just more than 1,000 people in 18 countries in the Middle East and North Africa.

The central question was: “In your opinion should Syria’s President Assad resign?”

Across the whole region, the overall finding was that 81% of people polled thought President Assad should go.

But the polling company also stated: “Respondents in Syria are more supportive of their president. 55% do not believe Assad should resign.”

Looking closely at the survey report, it does not say explicitly how many of the 1,000 people who responded were from Syria. But it does say that 211 were polled in the Levant region, 46% of whom were in Syria.

Doing the sums, this suggests that only 97 people took part. When the BBC checked with YouGov Siraj for the exact breakdown, the company said that in fact there were 98 respondents from Syria (the difference arising from the fact that averages given in the survey report were rounded).

This is a very low sample according to the managing director of survey company ORB, Johnny Heald, who has been carrying out polls in the Middle East for many years.

“When we poll and we want to find out what Libyans think, or what Syrians think, we would rarely do anything less than 1,000 interviews,” he says.

“One thousand is the generally accepted industry minimum to be able to speak confidently about what people from a particular country think about an issue.

“If you say that this poll covers people from 18 countries, then that’s fine. But you need to be very careful when you interpret the findings.

“It is not good to say that 55% of Syrians, for example, think that Assad should stay when only 97 people were asked that question.”

But he has another criticism - according to UN figures, only 18% of people in Syria have access to the internet, which means that the sample polled is biased towards those who can get online.

 

The people who conducted the survey at YouGov Siraj, the Dubai-based arm of a UK polling company, say the poll was not intended to be representative of all Syrians.

They too say the sample was too low for this and that internet penetration in the country is not good enough.

This is why they referred to “respondents from Syria” rather than referring to “Syrians”, they say.

However, the Doha Debates TV programme, which commissioned the poll and published its findings, were not as sensitive to the distinction.

The figure is described on its site as: “Syrians are more supportive of their president with 55% not wanting him to resign.”

In a statement, the pollsters at YouGov Siraj said that with hindsight they wish they had been clearer: “To the layman, there seems very little difference between the two expressions but for researchers, the difference is huge.

“I think we should have stressed the difference much more to our client (or simply not shown the Syria data, as there was always a chance it might be misinterpreted).”

When we asked the organisers of the Doha Debates about the statistic, they insisted that despite the small sample size, the result was “of interest”.

They say the figures and polling data are freely available for people to draw their own conclusions.

Is it OK to put out a figure based on such a low sample?

Johnny Heald thinks it is acceptable for pollsters to pull out data from a broader poll, because often it is interesting.

But he says: “What you should always do is say: ‘Caution - this is a low base size.’

“The problem comes when people interpret it to be representative of a country.

“And I think in defence of YouGov, they don’t claim the poll is nationally representative of what Syrians think.

“They have just pulled out the Syrian numbers and because it is an interesting story and somewhat controversial, I think the journalists jumped on it and ran with it, without thinking about the science behind how they came to that figure.”

Brian Whitaker’s Article: Syria and the ‘Assad poll’

Another insidious myth is doing the rounds: that 55% of Syrians support president Assad. The figure was cited by Aisling Byrne in an article which I critiqued recently. Now, it has surfaced again in an article by Jonathan Steele for the Guardian.

While it is undoubtedly true that the Assad regime still has a measure of support within Syria, no one can sensibly put a figure on it or claim that Assad’s supporters form a majority.

The 55% figure comes from an internet survey by YouGov Siraj for al-Jazeera’s Doha Debates. Just over 1,000 people across the Arab countries were asked their opinion of Assad and an overwhelming majority – 81% – thought he should step down.

However, al-Jazeera says the picture inside Syria is different: “Syrians are more supportive of their president with 55% not wanting him to resign.”

What is the basis for this statement? A look at the methodology of the survey shows that 211 of the respondents were in Levantine countries and that 46% of those were in Syria. In other words, the finding is based on a sample of just 97 internet users in Syria among a population of more than 20 million. It’s not a meaningful result and certainly not adequate grounds for such sweeping conclusions about national opinion in Syria.

Source: http://www.al-bab.com/blog/2012/blog1201.htm#syria_and_the_assad_poll

British Solidary for Syria’s Article: Syrian poll backing Assad has no credibility

It is astonishing that you publish an article based on such poor evidence (Most Syrians back Assad, 18 January). We have no doubt that the Doha Debates are a respectable forum for dialogue, but in the poll Jonathan Steele quotes, 1,012 respondents completed the survey, with only 21% (211 respondents) from the Levant. Only 46% of those 211 were from Syria – that’s about 97 respondents. How can this possibly be representative of Syrian opinion? And is it even possible to conduct an objective opinion poll in a tyranny ruled by fear, where expressing opinions freely can lead to arrest, torture, and even execution? Steele talks about western media bias, but does not mention that very few journalists have been able to enter Syria legally. Those that do are kept under tight surveillance. Neither does he mention the role of Syrian state media in spreading disinformation and fuelling armed conflict. He seems to have set himself an impossible task – proving the legitimacy of a dictatorship which kills its citizens on a daily basis.

Anas El-Khani, Kinana Saffour, Anass Toma, Amr Salahi, Hamza al-Sibaai, Hussam Hajjouk
British Solidarity for Syria

Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jan/19/syrian-poll-assad-no-credibility