September 2026 · Data Notes
Political Interest and Engagement in Turkey and Iran
These are personal reflections, not institutional statements. The views here are mine alone and do not represent any organization I am affiliated with.
The World Values Survey asks several questions that, taken together, describe how people in a country relate to politics day to day: how interested are they in politics, how important do they say it is in their own life, and when something bothers them, do they take even a small step like signing a petition? This note reports what the data say for Turkey and, where comparable figures exist, for Iran.
Interest in politics
Looking at every survey wave fielded in Turkey since 1989, 11,597 people in total, 9 percent describe themselves as very interested in politics, 39 percent as somewhat interested, 27 percent as not very interested, and 26 percent as not at all interested. That means roughly half of all respondents across more than three decades lean toward the less interested side, even though plenty of people are still interested too.
One honest note about this file. It breaks the totals down by wave, but for each answer, it shows what share of that answer came from each survey round, not what share of people in that round gave that answer. In plain terms, it tells us how the pool of interested and uninterested people has shifted over time, but it cannot give us a clean year by year trend line for interest itself. So I am not showing it as one. The chart above uses the one number this file gives cleanly: the combined total across all waves.
How much it actually matters, Iran compared with Turkey
A separate survey, from 2017 to 2022, asked people in several countries, including Iran and Turkey, how important politics actually is in their own life, not just how interesting they find it. The two countries look fairly close here. In Iran, 23 percent said politics is very important and 36 percent said rather important. In Turkey, 21 percent said very important and 35 percent said rather important. They differ more at the other end: 30 percent of Turks said politics is not very important to them, against 19 percent in Iran, while more Iranians than Turks picked not at all important, 22 percent against 13 percent.
A small step: signing a petition
Caring about politics is one thing. Acting on it, even in a small way, is another. The same survey asked whether people had ever signed a petition, would consider doing so, or would never do it. In Iran, 12 percent said they had actually signed one, 42 percent said they might, and 45 percent said they would never do it. In Turkey, fewer had signed one and more ruled it out: 8 percent had signed a petition, 41 percent might, and 47 percent said they would never do it.
Taken together, the three measures show a consistent pattern rather than one single story. Interest in politics is real and widely shared in Turkey, even though a narrow majority lean toward the less interested end of the scale. Politics feels about as important to daily life in two countries with very different political systems, with Turkey and Iran close to each other on the very important and rather important categories. And the appetite for even a small step like a petition, far short of a protest, stays modest in both places, with close to half of each sample ruling it out completely.
Sources: World Values Survey Association and the EVS–WVS research group. Interest in politics figures from the EVS–WVS Integrated Time Series 1981–2022, Turkey, variable E023, all waves pooled, N equals 11,597. Importance of politics and petition signing figures from the World Values Survey Wave 7 (2017–2022) cross national data file, Iran and Turkey. Figures are the weighted percentages reported in the WVS/EVS online data analysis tool.