Berlin - One in seven young people in Germany admits to showing hostility towards foreigners, according to a survey, details of which were released on Tuesday.

Some 5 per cent of young men admitted to membership in a right- wing extremist organization, according to the study entitled "Young People in Germany as Perpetrators and Victims of Violence."

Initial results of the survey, in which 45,000 15-year-olds were questioned in 2007-2008, were disclosed in Berlin by Interior Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble and Christian Pfeiffer, head of the Criminal Research Institute in the state of Lower Saxony.

Pfeiffer said right-wing tendencies were more common in young men than in teenage girls and more pronounced in schools at the lowest level of Germany's three-tier school system.

The full report is expected to be released in the second half of this year.

Experts have been warning of stepped up efforts by right-wing anti-foreigner groups to recruit members among Germany's disaffected young people, particularly in the former communist east of the country.

In a related development, an opinion poll showed 55.5 per cent of Germany's eligible voters of Turkish extraction would vote for the centre-left Social Democratic Party
(SPD) if elections were held now.

Only 10 per cent said they would support Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservative alliance of Christian Democrats and Christian Social Union (CDU/CSU), which rules in a grand coalition with SPD.

Some 690,000 German-Turks are eligible to vote, according to the Society for Communications Research DATA4U, which conducted the survey in the first week of March.

Germany votes in a general election on September 27. (dpa)