The year 2020 had already given Turkey a difficult start, with earthquakes, landslides and dead soldiers. The arrival in March of the coronavirus labelled COVID-19 by the World Health Organisation marked the start of a global crisis. Turkey is now getting its share of loss of life from the virus. And, like the rest of the world, Turkey is plunged into economic uncertainty. We ask: How are the Turkish public responding to the Corona Era?

Rising desire for strong leadership: As is to be expected at a time of rising uncertainty, we detect an increasing search for strong leadership. We saw serious falls in the approval ratings of leading politicians from December 2019 to February 2020. As of March 2020, they are all on the rise. Against that, there is no major change in support levels for political parties.

Corona-shock: The coronavirus is seen as the country’s biggest problem as of March 2020. The majority is afraid of the virus and there is wide public support for comprehensive measures to prevent the spread of the virus. The crisis also appears to have negatively impacted on expectations for the future. It has also had an impact on the economic situation and social life of a large majority of the population. A majority feel that Turkey was late to implement measures such as quarantine for people coming from abroad.

“Undecided but...”: When we ask people how they expect their life satisfaction to change in 2020, 73.5% give a negative answer. On the other hand, the public appears less pessimistic about the state of the nation, when compared to a month earlier. In fact, there has been a four point rise in those who think the country is improving. Yes, those who are pessimistic still form a majority of close to 57%, but it appears that compared to other months pessimism is on the wane. The reason may be linked to the survey technique (CATI), or to an attempt to put on a brave face against the scary outlook.

“Diplomatic” view on Syria conflict: Like it or not, the coronavirus crisis has forced the war in Syria and even the operation in Idlib into the background. Nevertheless, our findings here this month match previous months in pointing to a need for a diplomatic, rather than military solution.

The March Turkey's Pulse survey was carried out using the stratified sampling and weighting method on 1,526 people in 28 provinces based on the 26 regions of Turkey's NUTS 2 system between March 19 - 27. The survey used CATI (computer-assisted telephone interviewing) methodology with a margin error of 2.46 percent at the 95 percent level of confidence.

Margin of Error: Overall: +/- 2.46, AKP: +/- 4.32, CHP: +/- 6.09, MHP: +/- 9.42, HDP: +/- 9.20, İYİ Party: +/- 9.90