Conspiracy theories in Turkey

[1] This is explained by a desire to "make up for lost Ottoman grandeur",[1] the humiliation of perceiving Turkey as part of "the malfunctioning half" of the world,[2] and a "low level of media literacy among the Turkish population.

"[3] Turkish author and journalist Mustafa Akyol describes the reason for the prevalence of conspiracy theorizing in Turkey as "it makes us feel important.

"[1] Turkish economist Selim Koru has pointed to the humiliation of perceiving Turkey as part of the "malfunctioning [half]" of the world.

[2] 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 Soros Open Society Institute said.

[5] 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 and to represent the state tradition is "unique to Turkey".

Atatürk with a top hat , a common male headgear in the West at the time (1925). His many reforms secularizing Turkey have made Atatürk the target of Islamist conspiracy theories.