ABSTRACT
This chapter provides the underpinnings and the cultural and ideological frames of the Turkish conspiratorial universe and its master narrative. It presents an overview of the making of modern Turkey and the unfolding incipient Turkish nationalist mind. The chapter explains the origins and fantasies of Turkish nationalism in pursuit of lost past grandeur under the shadow of the imperial retreat. It demonstrates how conspiracy theories created an outline of a historical scheme in which the domestic and international enemies of the Kemalist republic had been imagined as not only in collusion but also in close coordination. The chapter explores the historical account of the scheme, establishing a historical narrative and continuum that begins in the late Ottoman Empire and culminates. It addresses the Islamist counternarrative that was built, in part, on the same thrust and underlying premises but that simultaneously overturned its implications.
