Courcy’s Intelligence Brief

*** Russian opposition still struggling to make ground.  In our 4 July issue we looked at how the Russian anti-corruption campaigner and opposition activist Aleksey Navalnyy has been moving decisively ahead of his rivals in terms of his popularity amongst protesters.  His wider popularity, however, is less certain, reinforcing our view that the opposition movement is making little progress, although there remains the danger that President Vladimir Putin’s hard-line approach to the opposition could backfire and lead to a radicalization of the protest movement.

Navalnyy’s positive rating among protesters has grown threefold in the last four months and now stands at 46%, considerably ahead of Left Front coordinator Sergey Udaltsov on 26%.  With the next-placed person on just 10%, these figures support the view that Navalnyy has become the indisputable leader of the protest movement.  But Navalnyy’s position with the wider general public is nothing like so positive.  It is true that he has come a long way, but he is failing to consolidate general support.

Research carried out in April 2011 showed that as little as 6% of the general public had even heard of him.  His profile was then transformed by the mass protests that followed Russia’s disputed parliamentary elections last December.  As a consequence of this, a Levada Centre poll carried out in March 2012 showed that 25% of respondents knew who Navalnyy was, a rise of 19 percentage points from the April 2011 poll.

However, the state-controlled TV coverage that has been instrumental in this rise in recognition has been almost totally negative.  The three main state-controlled TV channels - Rossiya 1, Channel One, and NTV - enjoy a combined audience share of around 50%, and Navalnyy appeared in 162 state TV news reports between 6 March and 15 July.  Recently the state TV reports have focused on allegations of financial impropriety following the publication of hacked emails between Navalnyy and the governor of Kirov Region, Nikita Belykh.  As a consequence, although Navalnyy’s recognition by the general public is significantly up, only 19% of the 25% who say they recognize him say they would support him in a presidential election.

*** Turkey rules out talks with PKK.  On 13 July, Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan ruled out any hope of talks with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) guerrilla group.  He said: “Government negotiation with the separatist terror organization is out of the question.  Only fighting against the separatist terror organization is in question.  This fighting will continue until the moment the [PKK] lays down its arms.”

There were talks between the PKK and the National Intelligence Organization between 2009-2011, but the talks broke down after a PKK attack in July 2011 killed 13 soldiers in the south-eastern province of Diyarbakir.