Conspiracy theories are a prevalent feature of culture and politics in

Turkey Turkey ( tr, Türkiye ), officially the Republic of Türkiye ( tr, Türkiye Cumhuriyeti, links=no ), is a transcontinental country located mainly on the Anatolian Peninsula in Western Asia, with a small portion on the Balkan Peninsula ...

. Conspiracism is an important phenomenon in understanding Turkish politics. This is explained by a desire to " make up for our lost Ottoman grandeur", the humiliation of perceiving Turkey as part of "the malfunctioning half" of the world, and a low level of media literacy among the Turkish population.

Prevalence

Roots and causes

Turkish author and journalist Mustafa Akyol describes the reason for the prevalence of conspiracy theorizing in Turkey as "it makes us feel important. If the world is conspiring against us, we must be really special. It is, I believe, the way we Turks make up for our lost Ottoman grandeur." Turkish economist Selim Koru has pointed to the humiliation of perceiving Turkey as part of the "malfunctioning alf of the world. Turkish consumers are the second-most media illiterate when compared to countries in Europe, leaving them especially vulnerable to fake news, a 2018 report released by the

Open Society Institute Open Society Foundations (OSF), formerly the Open Society Institute, is a grantmaking network founded and chaired by business magnate George Soros. Open Society Foundations financially supports civil society groups around the world, with a st ...

said. A combination of low education levels, low reading scores, low media freedom and low societal trust went into making the score, which saw Turkey being placed above only North Macedonia. According to the

Reuters Institute The Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism (RISJ) is a UK-based research centre and think tank founded in 2006, which operates Thomson Reuters Journalism Fellowship Programme, also known as the Reuters Fellowship. History The institute ...

Digital News Report 2018, Turkey with some distance is the country with most made-up news reports in the world.

Distinct features

A distinct feature of conspiracy theorizing in Turkey is that at the alleged command and control end of an alleged conspiracy scheme there are usually narrated to be state governments; this is due to an extreme state-centric worldview taught in the Turkish education system. Doğan Gürpınar; a scholar whose areas of study include nationalism, historiography, and ideologies in Turkey; argues that conspiracism's power to shape intellectual discourse and ideological standpoints as well as represent the state tradition is unique to Turkey.

List of conspiracy theories

* Armenian genocide is invented: Turkish Armenian genocide denialists typically argue the academic consensus of it being a

genocide Genocide is the intentional destruction of a people—usually defined as an ethnic, national, racial, or religious group—in whole or in part. Raphael Lemkin coined the term in 1944, combining the Greek word (, "race, people") with the ...

as anti-Turkish propaganda or as a

conspiracy A conspiracy, also known as a plot, is a secret plan or agreement between persons (called conspirers or conspirators) for an unlawful or harmful purpose, such as murder or treason, especially with political motivation, while keeping their agr ...

spread by the

Armenians Armenians ( hy, հայեր, ''hayer'' ) are an ethnic group native to the Armenian highlands of Western Asia. Armenians constitute the main population of Armenia and the ''de facto'' independent Artsakh. There is a wide-ranging diaspora ...

, instead claiming that it either did not occur or that it was somehow justified at the time. *

COVID-19 misinformation False information, including intentional disinformation and conspiracy theories, about the scale of the COVID-19 pandemic and the origin, prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of the disease has been spread through social media, text messagin ...

: After the

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identi ...

started in early 2020, false information regarding the virus's place of origin, treatment, diagnosis, etc. has been widely spread through social media, news outlets, and political biases. That caused an " infodemic," as dubbed by the

World Health Organization The World Health Organization (WHO) is a specialized agency of the United Nations responsible for international public health. The WHO Constitution states its main objective as "the attainment by all peoples of the highest possible level o ...

. The numerous false claims regarding the treatment of the virus have caused harm on various fronts in the fight to subdue it. * Death of Özal: Some people believe that Turgut Özal, 8th president of Turkey, was assassinated in 1993. The main supporters of this theory are Özal's wife Semra Özal and their son Ahmet Özal. Retired brigadier-general Levent Ersöz was accused of the "assassination" and tried, but was found innocent and received an amnesty. * Mastermind narrative: The term "mastermind" ( tr, üst akıl) denotes the alleged command and control institution, somewhat ambiguously placed with the government of the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country Continental United States, primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., ...

, in a comprehensive conspiracy to weaken or even dismember Turkey. Erdoğan as well as the ''

Daily Sabah The ''Daily Sabah'' (lit. "Daily Morning") is a Turkish pro-government daily, published in Turkey. Available in English, Arabic, and owned by Turkuvaz Media Group, ''Daily Sabah'' published its first issue on 24 February 2014. The editor-in-chief ...

'' have often alleged that very different non-state actors, like the Salafi jihadist

Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant An Islamic state is a state that has a form of government based on Islamic law (sharia). As a term, it has been used to describe various historical polities and theories of governance in the Islamic world. As a translation of the Arabic ter ...

(ISIL), the

Kurdistan Workers' Party The Kurdistan Workers' Party or PKK is a Kurdish militant political organization and armed guerrilla movement, which historically operated throughout Kurdistan, but is now primarily based in the mountainous Kurdish-majority regions of south ...

(PKK) and the Islamist cult with political ambitions around Fethullah Gülen, were attacking Turkey at the same time in a well-coordinated campaign. Journalist Ömer Turan asserted that Netflix Turkey's teaser trailer for

Money Heist ''Money Heist'' ( es, La casa de papel, link=no, , ) is a Spanish heist crime drama television series created by Álex Pina. The series traces two long-prepared heists led by the Professor (Álvaro Morte), one on the Royal Mint of Spain, an ...

contained messages aiming to incite the "second wave" of the Gezi Park protests. * Anti-Israel: In the course of the 2006

Crimean–Congo hemorrhagic fever Crimean–Congo hemorrhagic fever (CCHF) is a viral disease. Symptoms of CCHF may include fever, muscle pains, headache, vomiting, diarrhea, and bleeding into the skin. Onset of symptoms is less than two weeks following exposure. Complicatio ...

outbreak in Turkey,

Felicity Party The Felicity Party ( tr, Saadet Partisi, SP) is an Islamist Turkish political party. It was founded in 2001, and mainly supported by conservative Muslims in Turkey. It was founded on 20 July 2001 after the Virtue Party (FP) was banned by the ...

member Abdullah Uzun claimed that the tick species that spread the disease was brought to Turkey by Israeli female tourists. In May 2012, a dead European bee-eater with an Israeli leg-band, used by naturalists to track migratory birds, was found by villagers near the southeastern Turkish city of

Gaziantep Gaziantep (), previously and still informally called Aintab or Antep (), is a major city and capital of the Gaziantep Province, in the westernmost part of Turkey's Southeastern Anatolia Region and partially in the Mediterranean Region, approxi ...

. The villagers worried that the bird may have carried a micro-chip from Israeli intelligence to spy on the area and alerted local officials. The head of the Agriculture and Livestock Provincial Directorate in Gaziantep, Akif Aslanpay, examined the corpse of the bee-eater and stated that he found that "the nose of the bird is very different and much lighter than others" and that it "can be used for audio and video," which, "in the case of Israel, they do." A counter-terrorism unit became involved before

's agriculture ministry assured villagers that it is common to equip migratory birds with rings in order to track their movements. The BBC correspondent,

Jonathan Head Jonathan Head is the South East Asia Correspondent for BBC News, the main newsgathering department of the BBC, and its 24-hour television news channels BBC World News and BBC News Channel, as well as the BBC's domestic television and radio chann ...

, ascribed the event to his view that "wildly implausible conspiracy theories take root easily in Turkey, with alleged Israeli plots among the most widely believed." *

War against Islam War against Islam is a term used to describe a concerted effort to harm, weaken or annihilate the societal system of Islam, using military, economic, social and cultural means, or means invading and interfering in Islamic countries under the prete ...

, also called the "War on Islam" or "Attack on Islam", is a conspiracy theory narrative in

Islamism Islamism (also often called political Islam or Islamic fundamentalism) is a political ideology which posits that modern State (polity), states and Administrative division, regions should be reconstituted in constitutional, Economics, econom ...

discourse to describe an alleged conspiracy to harm, weaken or annihilate the societal system of

Islam Islam (; ar, ۘالِإسلَام, , ) is an Abrahamic monotheistic religion centred primarily around the Quran, a religious text considered by Muslims to be the direct word of God (or '' Allah'') as it was revealed to Muhammad, the ...

, using

military A military, also known collectively as armed forces, is a heavily armed, highly organized force primarily intended for warfare. It is typically authorized and maintained by a sovereign state, with its members identifiable by their distinct ...

economic An economy is an area of the production, distribution and trade, as well as consumption of goods and services. In general, it is defined as a social domain that emphasize the practices, discourses, and material expressions associated with th ...

social Social organisms, including human(s), live collectively in interacting populations. This interaction is considered social whether they are aware of it or not, and whether the exchange is voluntary or not. Etymology The word "social" derives from ...

and

cultural Culture () is an umbrella term which encompasses the social behavior, institutions, and norms found in human societies, as well as the knowledge, beliefs, arts, laws, customs, capabilities, and habits of the individuals in these groups.T ...

means. The perpetrators of the conspiracy are alleged to be non-Muslims, particularly the

Western world The Western world, also known as the West, primarily refers to the various nations and states in the regions of Europe, North America, and Oceania.

and " false Muslims", allegedly in collusion with political actors in the

Western world The Western world, also known as the West, primarily refers to the various nations and states in the regions of Europe, North America, and Oceania.

. While the contemporary conspiracy theory narrative of the "War against Islam" mostly covers general issues of societal transformations in

modernization Modernization theory is used to explain the process of modernization within societies. The "classical" theories of modernization of the 1950s and 1960s drew on sociological analyses of Karl Marx, Emile Durkheim and a partial reading of Max Weber, ...

and

secularization In sociology, secularization (or secularisation) is the transformation of a society from close identification with religious values and institutions toward non-religious values and secular institutions. The ''secularization thesis'' expresses ...

, as well as general issues of international power politics among modern states, the

Crusades The Crusades were a series of religious wars initiated, supported, and sometimes directed by the Latin Church in the medieval period. The best known of these Crusades are those to the Holy Land in the period between 1095 and 1291 that were ...

, are often narrated as its alleged starting point. The English-language political

neologism A neologism Ancient_Greek.html"_;"title="_from_Ancient_Greek">Greek_νέο-_''néo''(="new")_and_λόγος_/''lógos''_meaning_"speech,_utterance"is_a_relatively_recent_or_isolated_term,_word,_or_phrase_that_may_be_in_the_process_of_entering_com ...

of "War on Islam" was coined in Islamist discourse in the 1990s and popularized as a conspiracy theory only after 2001. *

Treaty of Lausanne The Treaty of Lausanne (french: Traité de Lausanne) was a peace treaty negotiated during the Lausanne Conference of 1922–23 and signed in the Palais de Rumine, Lausanne, Switzerland, on 24 July 1923. The treaty officially settled the confl ...

: It has been claimed in civil and formal circles that the

will expire in 2023. According to the conspiracy theory, Turkey is forbidden to mine its natural resources (such as

boron Boron is a chemical element with the symbol B and atomic number 5. In its crystalline form it is a brittle, dark, lustrous metalloid; in its amorphous form it is a brown powder. As the lightest element of the '' boron group'' it has t ...

and

petroleum Petroleum, also known as crude oil, or simply oil, is a naturally occurring yellowish-black liquid mixture of mainly hydrocarbons, and is found in geological formations. The name ''petroleum'' covers both naturally occurring unprocessed crud ...

) due to the "secret articles" of the treaty; therefore, Turkey will rapidly become a

developed country A developed country (or industrialized country, high-income country, more economically developed country (MEDC), advanced country) is a sovereign state that has a high quality of life, developed economy and advanced technological infrastruct ...

by mining and exporting its resources once the treaty expires. *

Mustafa Kemal Atatürk Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, or Mustafa Kemal Pasha until 1921, and Ghazi Mustafa Kemal from 1921 Surname Law (Turkey), until 1934 ( 1881 – 10 November 1938) was a Turkish Mareşal (Turkey), field marshal, Turkish National Movement, re ...

: Various conspiracy theories against Atatürk, the founder of the Republic of Turkey, have been put forward by Islamist circles who did not support his secularist reforms. Kadir Mısıroğlu, known for his hatred of Atatürk, is behind many conspiracy theories about Atatürk. One of these conspiracy theories is that Anatolia was invaded by the Greeks as a result of Atatürk's agreement with the

United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and ...

to overthrow the

caliphate A caliphate or khilāfah ( ar, خِلَافَة, ) is an institution or public office under the leadership of an Islamic steward with the title of caliph (; ar, خَلِيفَة , ), a person considered a political-religious successor to th ...

. Another conspiracy theory about Atatürk is that he was poisoned to death by

Freemasons Freemasonry or Masonry refers to fraternal organisations that trace their origins to the local guilds of stonemasons that, from the end of the 13th century, regulated the qualifications of stonemasons and their interaction with authorities ...

due to the closure of

Masonic lodges A Masonic lodge, often termed a private lodge or constituent lodge, is the basic organisational unit of Freemasonry. It is also commonly used as a term for a building in which such a unit meets. Every new lodge must be warranted or chartered ...

in Turkey in 1935. In 2015, ''

Yeni Şafak ''Yeni Şafak'' ("New Dawn") is a conservative, Islamist Turkish daily newspaper. The newspaper is known for its hardline support of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and the AK Party and has a very close relationship with the Turkish governmen ...

'' claimed that

İsmet İnönü Mustafa İsmet İnönü (; 24 September 1884 – 25 December 1973) was a Turkish army officer and statesman of Kurdish descent, who served as the second President of Turkey from 11 November 1938 to 22 May 1950, and its Prime Minister three time ...

was in charge of planning the murder.

Prevalence

Roots and causes

Distinct features

List of conspiracy theories

See also

References

Further reading