There is a book written by a professor of psychology and behavioral economics at Duke University Dan Ariely. Its called "The (honest) truth about dishonesty: how we lie to everyone- especially ourselves". While the book in general is about people lying (and yes we all do lie even though sometimes very little, and even though we might even call these lies "white lies") and the patterns of lying and etc. there were few examples mentioned in the book that reminded me very much (or in fact explained it) how politicians lie and where the whole thing about conspiracy theories comes from.
Let me explain a bit further. You see very recently, the protests that shook Turkey were closely linked to many conspiracy theories among which were the so- called vicious "interest lobby", the international Jewish conspiracy, Illuminati, Lutfhansa, the CIA, international media outlets, Germany among other European countries- the so- called "evil powers" wanting to weaken great Turkish state. More recently, there was also a case of telekinesis (yes! for real!), by which, all of these theories proved more or less to be true. Turkey's newly appointed chief adviser to Prime Minster, Yigit Bulut actually claimed through his telekinetic powers that it was those terrible terrible dark forces behind Gezi Park protests wanting to destroy Turkey's great economy and its image abroad (you can read more on this in a
piece by Guardian's Flachra Gibbons).
Similarly to PM Erdogan, there is another country leader (among many others) who strongly believes in such conspiracy theories- Turkey's brother nation, Azerbaijan and its incumbent president Ilham Aliyev. President Aliyev as well as his cronies strongly believe that there is strong outside lobby wanting to damage Azerbaijan's economy, its image and its reputation (but on the bright side, at least there isn't a case of telekinetic power, phew!)
Now, in Ariely's book, the bottom line of lying at times boils down to this: you believe in something so much that you start thinking its the truth and at some point one forgets the actual truth (i apologize in advance to the author if I am drawing wrong conclusions but at least from one of the chapters I remember, I feel like this could be one of the conclusions drawn). This "belief" in "(dis)honesty" explains well the whole freaky concept of conspiracy theories politicians make up. In the case of Turkey, Azerbaijan and many others who claim the existence of Darth Wader like powerful dark forces on the mission to take over these countries and well, pretty much destroy them.
To me all of this looks like dark fantasy comic book. Except its not a comic book and what we are seeing happening in Turkey and Azerbaijan is bitter reality and a game of politics. And while the comic books end at some point (and the good prevails), in reality (and with all these conspiracy theories around) we might be facing a future of Darth Waders, evil witches and Hogwarts with lots of members from Slytherin- all to get us.
