ABSTRACT
This conclusion presents some closing thoughts on the key concepts discussed in the preceding chapters of this book. The book provides an overview of the conspiracy theories that have abounded in Turkey over one-and-a-half centuries of the historical continuum. The frenzy rising over the trauma of the painful dissolution of the Ottoman Empire was moderated by the transition to democracy and Turkey’s alignment with the West in the Cold War. Non-European alternatives became viable and desirable, and the stance instigated an anti-Westernist animus that was infatuated with conspiracy theories exposing how the imperialist and Christian West was resolute in its desire to partition Turkey in collaboration with its allies within, continuing the cause of the thousand-year-old Crusades. Yet in the 2000s, the rise of political Islam prompted and boosted a new and even sharper wave of conspiracy theories and a conspiratorial culture.
