Over 70 percent of Turkey’s population aged 18-25 said they would prefer to live abroad if given the opportunity, according to a new survey by German political foundation Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung (KAS).
Of the participants in the survey, based on in-person interviews with over 3,200 youth in 28 Turkish provinces between May September 2021, 62.8 percent said they failed to see a “good future” for the country, while 35.2 percent said they were “completely hopeless” about Turkey.
The survey arrives amid an economic crisis in Turkey, which has forced citizens to grapple with the country’s highest inflation rate in almost two decades. Turkey is struggling with a volatile lira, which lost 44 percent of its value last year, making it by far the worst performer in emerging markets.
Meanwhile, the country’s youth unemployment rate rose by 1.7 percentage points in January to 22.3 percent, according to official data.
Over 82.9 percent of respondents said that they believed wealth and income were not distributed equally in Turkey while 87.3 percent said the country’s unemployment rate of 11.2 according to official records was too high.
Of those surveyed, 25.8 designated themselves as having “unhappy’’ lives, while 55.2 percent of respondents said they were “neither happy nor unhappy” with their lives.
Speaking on Turkey’s government, 62.5 percent of respondents said they were unhappy with how Turkey was being ruled, while 5.9 percent said that they were happy with President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s government.
Erdoğan has been in power for almost two decades, making him the only leader of Turkey the respondents have witnessed to date.
When asked who they would vote for if general elections were held between May and September of this year, the main opposition Republican People’s Party received the lion’s share of support with 23.9 percent, followed by 4.9 percent for opposition center-right Good Party, 4.7 percent for the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party and 4.4 percent for AKP’s far-right ally, the Nationalist Movement Party.
Meanwhile, 44.7 percent of those surveyed did not answer the election question, citing that they were either “undecided,” “would not cast a vote,” or “did not want to answer the question.’’
The 18-25 demographic, known as Generation Z, comprises seven million of Turkey’s population, whose majority will experience their first election as voters in the next polls scheduled for 2023.