A certain amount of distrust is wholesome. Yes, you must trust and believe in people or life becomes unmanageable. Yet, neither a man nor a crowd nor a nation can be always trusted to act wisely and socially under the conditions of everyday hardship and misfortunes. Trust only a half of what you hear, they say. Trust half of what?

A survey by GfK Ad Hoc Research Worldwide [http://www.gfk.com/group/company/index.en.html; Nuremberg/Frankfurt, Nov. 25, 2006] on people's trust in leading societal institutions shows that politicians, managers and journalists all suffer from the same problem: people do not really trust them. European citizens afford representatives of the church, lawyers and in particular doctors a greater degree of trust. The situation in America is similar to Europe. People from Northern Europe are more positively disposed towards leading figures, whereas those in Central and Eastern Europe tend to be more cynical. Germans are way out in front in terms of being suspicious of political and business leaders in particular.

Politicians, managers and even journalists do not have an easy time of it. Citizens of Europe and the USA do not always regard them in a positive light. In Western Europe, 86% of people responded that they did not have any faith in politicians, while two thirds harbor similar feelings towards top management in companies. People in Denmark and Finland, however, feel very differently. 64% of Danish respondents and 50% of Finnish respondents indicated that they trusted business leaders, which is a far higher percentage than in other countries. Danish people were also more positive regarding politicians than other nationalities, with four in ten people finding politicians at least a little trustworthy.

How to interpret the survey? Does a more trustful population correspond to a more beneficial and more benevolent society? The examples of Finland and Denmark tend to suggest so, but is it so with Turkey? That is, if trust in Turkey has the same meaning and the same consequences as in Northern Europe.

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Krešimir J. Adamić