Oct 31, 2014

Turkey’s political leaders have the habit of taking journalists into their jets and giving them interviews in the air. Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan tends to invite only journalists who support him. During his official trip to Latvia and Estonia Oct. 22-24, he once again had an entourage of sympathetic journalists who took down his important and interesting comments. While addressing the civil wars in Syria and Iraq, in particular the conflict between the Islamic State (IS) and the Kurds of Kobani, Erdogan said that there was a “trap” for Turkey, and no ordinary one.

“We have to think well on this: Probably there is a different logic that set up this trap, this scheme. In other words, I don’t think that the mindset of the PYD [Democratic Union Party, the dominant Kurdish group in Kobani] is that formidable. Probably there is a mastermind. You have to figure that out.”

The Turkish term Erdogan used for "mastermind" was "ust akil," which can also mean “higher intellect” or “supreme mind.” By this, Erdogan apparently implied that while there are various actors in Iraq and Syria — the PYD, IS, the Syrian regime, the Baghdad government — there is a central brain, a planner that controls all these seemingly unrelated actors. They could all have their own agendas, but the “mastermind,” through some unseen mechanism, is using them like pawns on a giant chessboard.

Erdogan spoke openly of this “mastermind” for the fist time, but this conspiratorial view of the world has been promoted by the pro-Erdogan media over the past three years — ever since Turkish foreign policy began to face unexpected troubles. Instead of questioning whether Turkey could be making mistakes or simply accepting that Turkey exists in a very chaotic region, the pro-Erdogan media assumed that the chaos was created intentionally by “imperialist powers,” typically identified as the United States, United Kingdom or Israel.

It's no wonder that when Erdogan told journalists, “You have to figure that out,” the usual suspects were named. Journalist Avni Ozgurel declared on TV, “The mastermind is the United States.” He also argued that Washington wants to create a “Kurdish state in Syria,” which would mean “a new oil pipeline that will bypass Turkey.” Another journalist on Erdogan’s plane during the trip to Latvia and Estonia also identified the “mastermind” as Western powers, pointed to their spies within Turkey and warned of new conspiracies to come.