Erdoğan’s War on Truth

Five years ago, I went to bed a scholar and woke up the perpetrator of a coup.

With no evidence, the government of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has formally charged and prosecuted me for inciting the failed 2016 coup. A warrant has been issued for my arrest. I am part of a large and expanding group of alleged co-conspirators, the most famous of whom, Osman Kavala, one of Turkey’s most prominent civil-society organizers, has now spent years in jail for crimes he did not commit. The government is seeking life sentences plus 20 years for each of us. The Turkish authorities’ proof is invented and their reasoning is nakedly self-serving. But in the context of an authoritarian regime, none of that really matters: They control the press, the courts, and public opinion.

The accusations have upended my life. They have lost me friends and professional contacts, as well as the ability to return to my homeland. But they have also taught me about how conspiracism works on a procedural level: how it starts, how it spreads, how it can turn the mundane suspicious and the innocent