2013/11/14 by Doğan Gürpınar · 2 citations
Social Sciences · #Turkey's Politics and Society #Political Conflict and Governance #Politics and Conflicts in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Middle East
paper · doi:10.1080/19448953.2013.844588
openalex publication_date 2013/11/14 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/29
This paper discusses the surge of neo-nationalism and conspiratorial thinking in tandem with the rise of the Turkish revisionist historiography highly critical of Turkish nationalism and its legacy in the 20th century in the 2000s. The paper also examines the demonization of these historiographical deviations by proponents of Kemalist nation-statism. Because these revisionists challenged nation-statist assumptions, such as the innocence of the Turkish nation and its self-victimization, their academic output was perceived as blasphemy against the common values of Turkish society, further fomenting neo-nationalist sentiment. Thus, the paper argues that the genesis of a revisionist historiography and the rising popularity of conspiracy theories among the public cannot be disassociated from each other.1 [1] This paper omits the conspiracy theories widely held among conservatives and confines itself to the secular neo-nationalist (ulusalcı) conspiracy theories in Turkey. Since the triumph of the reformist-Islamist JDP over the Turkish national security establishment in 2008–10, the conspiratorial visions of the conservatives became more public and visible. These conspiratorial visions definitely require scrutiny and therefore needed to be addressed in another paper.