The annual survey, claiming to represent the views of 1.2 billion people, was conducted last summer by Gallup International for the World Economic Forum, based in Davos, Switzerland. Klaus Schwab, the founder and chairman of the forum, described the results as a wake-up call for leaders. “The findings of this comprehensive global survey send a strong message to the world’s leaders. People around the world expect and demand a lot more from their leaders than they receive. They want leaders who are capable of courageous and long-term decisions, acting in the best interests of a global citizenry,” he said.

Worldwide 63 percent of respondents said their political leaders were dishonest, 60 percent said they had too much power, and 52 percent said they were unethical.

Distrust of politicians was higher among those in Latin America, Asia and Africa than those in Europe or North America. Characterizing the results as depressing and grim reading for political leaders everywhere, the forum noted that Europeans and the U.S. public appeared more tolerant of politicians’ failings than people elsewhere. But Europeans are much more anxious about the future, with Germany, in particular, alarmed at the prospect of eroding wealth and growing insecurity.

The survey described Germany as the most pessimistic country in the world and one of the most critical of its political and business elites. Three out of four Germans, for example, had little confidence in their political leaders, while in the Netherlands, the figure was one in 10.

On fears for future security, the west Europeans led the global league, 55 percent believing the next generation would inhabit a more dangerous world. Fifty-four percent of people in the Middle East felt similarly, although the respondents were drawn from only three countries, Turkey, Egypt and Israel.

The pessimism-optimism gap between the older and young democracies of western and eastern Europe was striking, with only 27 percent of east Europeans fearing for their future security. On prosperity prospects, only one in five west Europeans believed in increased affluence in the years ahead, while half of east Europeans took the rosier view.

In what may represent a damning verdict on Tony Blair’s determination to maintain the U.K.-U.S. “special relationship” with the Bush White House, 72 percent of Britons believed that “politicians respond to people more powerful than themselves.” That outcome in Britain was considerably higher than the west European average of 58 percent.

In raids this week in the Hague, Amsterdam and Amersfoort — including a 14-hour standoff with armed Muslims — anti-terrorist units have arrested seven alleged Islamist terrorists. This is in addition to the arrest of Mohammed Bouyeri, charged with the murder of van Gogh, and a further five arrests connected to the killing.

Amid a mood of rising national anguish, government ministers went to Parliament in the Hague yesterday armed with a 60-page analysis of the background to the van Gogh murder, proposals to get tough on troublemaking immigrants, and a version of events that appeared aimed at getting cabinet ministers off the hook.

The interior minister, Johan Remkes, has been facing calls for his resignation over alleged police and intelligence failures to penetrate Islamist networks. Remkes and the justice minister, Piet Hein Donner, announced proposals to close some of the mosques serving the Netherlands’ Muslim community of almost 1 million if the mosques are identified to be inciting breaches of public order.

In a country where it is relatively easy for immigrants to obtain citizenship, the ministers also announced measures to take away the Dutch passports of those with dual citizenship if they are convicted of a crime. The ministers also said the powers of the security services should be beefed up to tackle a problem that appears to be careering out of control. Merely tracking 150 radical Muslims considered dangerous was proving difficult, Remkes said. “It is an illusion to think you can have complete operational control over that group 24 hours a day, seven days a week,” Remkes said.

The move to get tougher on Muslim immigrants reflected the emerging government consensus on how to respond to a challenge that is shaking the country. On Wednesday the immigration minister, Rita Verdonk, blamed the Dutch culture of tolerance and liberalism for being ill-equipped to meet the challenge. “We’ve been too naive,” she said.

Appeals were made for Queen Beatrix to address the nation. One daily newspaper put out a front-page appeal saying: “Hate is spreading across this country like a firestorm. Mosques, churches and schools are being attacked. The Netherlands risks turning into a country of us and them, a country under the rule of fear. Your Majesty, please speak to your people.”

Overnight Thursdday schools and churches were attacked by arsonists in Rotterdam, Utrecht and Eindhoven, while a mosque near the northern town of Groningen was scrawled with White Power and Nazi graffiti symbols. No injuries were reported. Ministers and the security services said that the seven arrests on Wednesday were connected with an Amsterdam-based Islamist terrorist cell, the Capital Group, with which Bouyeri had contact.

What Helmut is against, like two out of three Austrians, is Turkey’s joining the European Union. Gerhard, the landlord serving him his wine, joined in eagerly. “This is Europe, and we’re in danger of losing our identity with all these people from Turkey and Africa. We Christians are losing our faith while the Muslims are getting more fundamentalist.”

Neither man wanted to give his full name. Both were keen to dwell on history. The place they were sitting, a hillside northeast of Vienna, was where 321 years ago last week the Polish king, John III, after a plea from the Vatican, marshaled a huge Roman Catholic army and went galloping down the mountain to save Christendom, Europe and Austria, routing the Turks, raising the 61-day Ottoman siege of Vienna, and halting the Turkish advance into the European heartland.

The legacy of the Turkish attempt to take the Hapsburg capital includes the greatest of Viennese institutions, the coffee house (for the Turks brought the bean to Austria), as well as a dread of the Muslim invader that is branded into folk memories across large swaths of central Europe and the Balkans.

In neighboring Hungary, which was under the Turks for 150 years, the national gallery near Buda castle is dominated by a giant canvas illustrating the mass slaughter that accompanied the fall of the town of Szigetvar to the Turks in 1556.

When the Serbian general Ratko Mladic supervised the massacre of 7,000 Bosnian Muslims in Srebrenica in 1995, he relished the mass murder as Serbian revenge.

Slovenia, the poster boy of post-Yugoslav success, is integrated into the European Union and NATO as a stable and prosperous democracy. But the uglier, intolerant aspect is that Ljubljana is the sole E.U. capital city without a mosque. For decades, Slovene Catholics have thwarted attempts by the country’s 50,000-strong Muslim community to build a mosque, although the constitutional court earlier this year finally threw out demands for a referendum that would have banned building one.

Turkey’s Islamist prime minister, Tayyip Erdogan, goes to Brussels tomorrow to argue for Ankara’s seat at the E.U. table. An E.U. commission report in two weeks will set the scene for a formal E.U. summit decision in December on whether Turkey will be admitted to talks to join the union.

And as crunch time nears for one of the E.U.’s biggest-ever decisions, Turkophobia is sweeping the region, deep-seated European prejudice is showing its true colors, and political elites are panicking.

Deliberately recalling the “clash of civilizations” of 300 years ago, the liberal Viennese newsweekly Profil this week headlined its editorial “The Turks at the Gates of Vienna,” contending that Turkey’s accession was “not so much a risk as a danger.”

The outgoing Dutch European commissioner, Frits Bolkestein, delivered his parting shot a fortnight ago by warning of the “Islamisation of Europe” should Turkey join the union. “The relief of Vienna in 1683 will have been in vain,” he declared. The outgoing Austrian commissioner, Franz Fischler, stirred up more strong feeling by asserting that broad anti-Turkish public opinion across the E.U. should not be ignored. “The E.U. can’t just be a construct of diplomats.”

In Germany last week, the opposition Christian Democrat leader, Angela Merkel, who bids fair to be the next chancellor of the E.U.’s biggest power, came out categorically against Turkish membership, urging all her fellow center-right leaders in the E.U. to form an anti-Turkish bloc.

In Austria, the far-right leader and chief mischief maker, Jörg Haider, is threatening to bring down the center-right government if it gives a green light to Turkish entry talks. The government is in any case against Turkish entry, as are the opposition Social Democrats.

Austrian opinion polls show two-thirds against admitting Turkey and only one in five in favor. In Germany, home to 2.5 million Turks, the country’s biggest ethnic minority, a poll last week showed 55 percent against Turkey’s joining.

A detailed survey of public opinion in Europe and the U.S., published last week by the German Marshall Fund of the U.S., found Europeans deeply confused at the prospect of a Muslim country of 70 million joining the union. A pan-European survey issued last week found that 40 percent were not sure whether Turkey’s membership was good or bad. “Many Europeans are ambivalent,” the survey noted. “Although there is no European consensus on Turkey’s membership, the fact that many Europeans have not made up their minds creates the prospect for a constructive debate in Europe over Turkey’s future.”

In France, meanwhile, the polls show a slim majority in favor of Turkey’s joining “eventually” despite strong opposition from much of the French elite. Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, the architect of the new European constitution, which some claim is specifically designed to keep Turkey out, said last year that Turkish membership would signal “the end of the E.U.” Turkey was “not a European country.” It had “a different culture, a different approach, and a different way of life.”

Both France’s President Jacques Chirac and Germany’s Chancellor Gerhard Schröder support Turkey’s bid. Turkish membership is even more strongly supported by Britain.

Amid the fears, the Poles, eternally proud of saving Christendom from Islam in 1683, are magnanimous in victory. The Polish priest tending the Vienna church dedicated to the raising of the siege says: “Back then, the Turks had to be defeated. It was necessary. Now it’s different. We need to be all one big family. Of course Turkey is European. Of course they should be in the E.U.”

For admitting Turkey: Britain, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Finland, Sweden, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Ireland

Against admitting Turkey: Austria, Luxembourg

Divided: Germany (government for, opposition and public opinion against), France, Denmark, Hungary, Greece (government for, public opinion strongly against), Poland, Belgium, Netherlands, Slovenia, Cyprus, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia