# A shadowy foreign "Üst Akıl" (the "Mastermind" or "supra-mind") secretly directs every plot against Turkey, and pro-government media have identified it with a centuries-old Jewish conspiracy for world domination

**Verdict: Contradicted.** This is a debunked antisemitic conspiracy theory, and its verdict is locked accordingly. Since 2014 President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and pro-government (AKP) media have invoked a hidden foreign 'üst akıl' (the 'Mastermind' or 'supra-mind') said to be secretly orchestrating everything from street protests to coup attempts to the falling lira. As a political device it recasts all domestic dissent as foreign-directed treason. Its antisemitic core was made explicit in 2015, when the pro-government channel A Haber aired a roughly two-hour 'documentary' titled 'Üst Akıl' that identified the Mastermind with a 3,500-year Jewish plot for world domination and presented itself, in effect, as a sequel to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a proven early-20th-century forgery. The same lineage runs through Erdoğan's euphemism of an 'interest-rate lobby' and his framing of George Soros as 'the Hungarian Jew.' There is no single hidden hand coordinating unrelated events; the 'Mastermind' is an unfalsifiable catch-all that MEMRI, the ADL, Al-Monitor, Foreign Policy, and Turkish and Israeli scholars have documented as state-mainstreamed antisemitism. We report the smear as the hoax it is; we do not lend it standing.

Category: Secret Societies & Power · Era: 2010s–2020s · First circulated: The Turkish phrase 'üst akıl' entered mainstream political speech in 2014, when Erdoğan began attributing challenges to his government to a shadowy foreign 'Mastermind'; its antisemitic content was spelled out in a 2015 A Haber 'documentary' that cast the Mastermind as a millennia-old Jewish plot and echoed the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. The underlying tropes (the 'interest-rate lobby,' fantasies of Jewish world control) descend from an older strand of Turkish Islamist thought associated with Erdoğan's mentor Necmettin Erbakan and his Milli Görüş movement. · Believed by: Promoted from the top of the Turkish state and amplified across pro-government newspapers and broadcasters, which gives it a reach few conspiracy theories enjoy. Anxiety about foreign interference has real historical roots in Turkey and is a legitimate subject of debate; what is rated here is the specific claim of a single hidden 'Mastermind,' and its openly antisemitic version. The ADL's Global 100 survey has found that a large majority of respondents in Turkey endorse classic antisemitic stereotypes, a climate this state-level rhetoric feeds.
URL: https://theconspiratory.com/theory/ust-akil-mastermind-conspiracy

## Summary
'Üst akıl,' usually translated as the 'Mastermind' or 'supra-mind,' is the name Turkish pro-government discourse gives to an invisible foreign intelligence said to be secretly steering every threat to the country: the 2013 Gezi Park protests, the 2016 coup attempt, the PKK insurgency, currency crises, even criticism in the foreign press. This file separates two different things. That foreign powers have interests in Turkey, and that Turkey has a real history of foreign intervention, is not in dispute. The claim rated here is different: that one concealed 'Mastermind' coordinates all of these unrelated events, and, in the version broadcast by pro-government media, that this Mastermind is a Jewish conspiracy for world domination. In 2015 the pro-AKP channel A Haber aired a roughly two-hour 'documentary' called 'Üst Akıl' that made the antisemitism explicit, claiming Jews had plotted for 3,500 years, brought down the Ottoman Empire, and manipulated world governments, a narrative Al-Monitor and MEMRI described as a modern rerun of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. The theory is debunked: there is no evidence of any single coordinating hand, the 'Mastermind' works as an unfalsifiable device for branding all dissent as foreign treason, and its Jewish-plot form is a recycled hoax. This page reports the smear; it never asserts it.

## The claim
As pro-government voices state it: that a shadowy foreign 'üst akıl' (Mastermind) secretly plans and coordinates every major difficulty Turkey faces, that Turkish opposition figures, protesters, and coup plotters are merely its local pawns, and, in the version aired by pro-government media, that this Mastermind is a Jewish conspiracy pursuing world domination and Turkey's subjugation.

## Origin and timeline
- 1970s onward: An antisemitic 'interest-rate lobby' (faiz lobisi) trope and fantasies of Jewish global control circulate in Turkish Islamist politics, notably in the Milli Görüş movement of Necmettin Erbakan, the former prime minister who was Erdoğan's political mentor. This supplies the older vocabulary that the later 'Mastermind' framing draws on.
- 2013: During the Gezi Park protests, Erdoğan and allied media blame unrest on a treacherous 'interest-rate lobby' and on foreign hands, and Erdoğan points to George Soros, referred to as 'the Hungarian Jew,' as a backer. Domestic protest over an urban-development plan and authoritarian drift is recast as an externally engineered plot.
- 2014-10: Erdoğan begins regularly invoking a foreign 'üst akıl' (Mastermind, literally 'supra-mind' or 'supra-intellect') said to be directing schemes against Turkey. A December 12, 2014 speech centered on the concept becomes a reference point for the narrative.
- 2015-03: The pro-government channel A Haber airs a roughly two-hour 'documentary' titled 'Üst Akıl,' also carried on pro-government newspaper sites such as Sabah. Featuring pro-government academics and journalists, it claims Jews have conspired for 3,500 years to dominate the world, brought down the Ottoman Empire, and continue to plot against Turkey. Al-Monitor and MEMRI describe it as an AKP-era version of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
- 2016-07: After the failed July 2016 coup attempt, officials frame the Gülenist network blamed for it as a mere instrument of the same foreign 'Mastermind,' folding a real and traumatic event into the all-purpose conspiracy frame.
- 2018 onward: As the lira slides and inflation climbs, Erdoğan repeatedly attributes economic pressure to the 'interest-rate lobby' and outside plotters rather than to his own unorthodox insistence on cutting interest rates. Foreign Policy and other analysts warn that the antisemitic framing deters investment and worsens the crisis it blames on others.

## The evidence, claim by claim
- Claim: A single hidden 'Mastermind' is coordinating the protests, the coup attempt, the PKK, and the currency crisis all at once.
  Evidence: No such coordinator has ever been shown to exist, and the events lumped together have separate, well-documented causes. The 2013 Gezi protests began over a local development plan and grew into a broad reaction to authoritarian governance. The 2016 coup attempt is attributed by Turkey's own courts to a factional network inside the military and state. The PKK conflict is a decades-old Kurdish insurgency with its own history. The post-2018 currency crisis tracks closely with Erdoğan's insistence on cutting interest rates into high inflation, a policy mainstream economists warned would weaken the lira. Tying these unrelated things to one concealed hand is classic single-cause conspiracism: it explains everything and therefore explains nothing, and no document, budget, or actor for the alleged 'Mastermind' has ever been produced.
- Claim: The A Haber 'documentary' proves the Mastermind is a real, centuries-old Jewish plot.
  Evidence: The film proves nothing except that a state-aligned channel was willing to broadcast the Protocols of the Elders of Zion in updated dress. Its central assertion, a 3,500-year Jewish scheme for world domination, is the very fantasy of the Protocols, a text fabricated by Tsarist secret police around 1903 and exposed by 1921, when The Times of London showed it was plagiarized from an unrelated French satire. A claim that has been a proven forgery for a century does not become evidence because a television network dramatizes it. Al-Monitor and MEMRI catalogued the film as exactly this: a recycled hoax, not a disclosure.
- Claim: The 'interest-rate lobby' is just a neutral way of naming financial speculators, not an antisemitic slur.
  Evidence: In Turkish political usage the phrase carries a specific, documented meaning. As Foreign Policy and other analysts note, 'interest-rate lobby' (faiz lobisi) invokes the old antisemitic conspiracy that Jewish financiers control nations by trapping them in debt at ruinous interest, a trope with deep roots in the Islamist milieu of Erdoğan's mentor Necmettin Erbakan. The reading is not inferred from nowhere: during Gezi, Erdoğan paired the euphemism with a direct reference to Soros as 'the Hungarian Jew.' The soft economic label and the antisemitic content are two faces of the same claim.
- Claim: Turkey really has been targeted by foreign powers, so warning about a 'Mastermind' is just realism.
  Evidence: Foreign powers have real interests in Turkey, and Turkey's modern history does include foreign intervention; that much is legitimate to discuss and this file does not deny it. But acknowledging real geopolitics is different from positing one omnipotent hidden intelligence that scripts every domestic event, and different again from identifying that intelligence as 'the Jews.' The 'Mastermind' frame converts ordinary politics, protest, factional intrigue, economic mismanagement, into treason directed from abroad, which conveniently delegitimizes all opposition. Real foreign policy analysis names specific states and interests and can be checked; the 'Mastermind' names an unfalsifiable phantom and, in its broadcast form, an ethnic scapegoat.
- Claim: This is fringe talk that does no real damage.
  Evidence: It is the opposite of fringe: it is promoted from the presidency and amplified across national media, which is precisely what makes it dangerous. The ADL has repeatedly warned about an increasingly hostile environment for Jews in Turkey, and its Global 100 survey has found a large majority of Turkish respondents endorsing classic antisemitic stereotypes. Foreign Policy argued that the same rhetoric spooks investors and deepens the economic damage it blames on outsiders. State-level normalization of a Jewish-plot narrative in a country with a small, vulnerable Jewish community is a documented harm, not a hypothetical one.

## Why people believe it
- Turkey's history gives fear of outside meddling a real foothold. The 1920 Treaty of Sèvres, which would have partitioned the country, left a lasting 'Sèvres syndrome' that scholars cite to explain why a narrative of foreign plotting resonates, and a real anxiety is easy to attach a false explanation to.
- The 2016 coup attempt actually happened. A genuine, traumatic assault on the state makes the idea of hidden enemies feel confirmed, even when the leap to a single all-controlling 'Mastermind' is unsupported.
- A single villain is simpler than a tangle of causes. 'One hidden hand is doing this to us' is more emotionally legible than protest movements, factional coups, an old insurgency, and monetary policy all operating at once.
- It is politically useful to those who spread it. Branding every critic, protester, and market as an agent of a foreign Mastermind turns domestic opposition into treason, which is a powerful tool for a government under pressure.
- It comes from the top and saturates the media. When a president and the national press repeat a frame, it acquires an authority that a fringe pamphlet never could, regardless of the evidence.

## Open questions
- What remains genuinely debated is ordinary and specific, not the conspiracy: the full internal anatomy of the 2016 coup attempt, and the precise mix of external pressures on Turkey's economy, are legitimate subjects of analysis. None of that uncertainty supports the existence of a single coordinating 'Mastermind,' still less a Jewish one.
- Why the frame persists is a question about propaganda and political utility, not about any hidden hand. It survives because it is useful to those who deploy it and because it attaches itself to real historical grievances, which is why a debunk that only says 'there is no cabal' tends to miss why the story keeps returning.

## Sources
- Islamist Turkish President Erdogan Says A 'Mastermind' Is Plotting Against Turkey; Antisemitic 'Documentary' Says Jews Have Been 'Mastermind' For Over 3,500 Years, MEMRI (2015): https://www.memri.org/reports/islamist-turkish-president-erdogan-says-mastermind-plotting-against-turkey-antisemitic
- Unraveling the AKP's 'Mastermind' conspiracy theory, Al-Monitor (2015): https://www.al-monitor.com/originals/2015/03/turkey-zion-protocols-akp-version.html
- Turkish film 'Mastermind' purports to reveal Jewish conspiracy, Ynetnews (2015): https://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4652817,00.html
- Erdogan's Anti-Semitism Will Sink Turkey's Economy, Foreign Policy (2018): https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/12/24/erdogans-anti-semitism-will-sink-turkeys-economy/
- The pull of conspiracy theories in Turkish political discourse, Asia Times (2022): https://asiatimes.com/2022/01/the-pull-of-conspiracy-theories-in-turkish-political-discourse/
- Erdoğan tapped anti-Semitic conspiracy theorist to fan xenophobia in Turkey, Nordic Monitor (2019): https://nordicmonitor.com/2019/05/erdogan-tapped-anti-semitic-conspiracy-theorist-to-fan-xenophobia-in-turkey/
- ADL Alarmed at Increasingly Hostile Environment Toward Jews in Turkey, Anti-Defamation League (ADL): https://www.adl.org/news/press-releases/adl-alarmed-at-increasingly-hostile-environment-toward-jews-in-turkey
- ADL blasts Turkish press, politicians for 'Jewish conspiracy' claims, The Times of Israel (2014): https://www.timesofisrael.com/adl-blasts-turkish-press-politicians-for-jewish-conspiracy-claims/
- Antisemitism: The “New Normal” in Turkey, Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies: https://dayan.org/content/antisemitism-new-normal-turkey
- Conspiracy theories in Turkey, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conspiracy_theories_in_Turkey

Rated by The Conspiratory, a neutral, sourced encyclopedia of conspiracy theories. Full page: https://theconspiratory.com/theory/ust-akil-mastermind-conspiracy