One of the mantras in some political and media circles over the last decades is that the bloc does not have a foreign policy and it is weak in its external relations. This is a rather erroneous judgement.
Squeezed between its own regional ambitions and those of global players, between domestic challenges and its own policy errors, the current regime in Ankara speaks and acts in an increasingly erratic manner. And the consequences are difficult to foresee at this stage.
Ever since the appearance of the Internet and the advancement of the World Wide Web, in the 1990s, it was generally thought that they would decisively contribute to the global democratisation of information. And this they initially did, the demos all over the world gaining unprecedented access to an immense variety of information in all fields of human thinking and action. However, governments and inter-governmental organisations also entered this digital arena and their first instinct was to try to control it.
In November 2020, the Turkish government has started to spread a narrative of return to democracy, rule of law and citizens' rights. The main reason for this new apparent U-turn is the degradation of the Turkish economy and, in effect, the diminishing popularity of the regime.
Conspiracy theories in a nationalistic key are being used for decades to justify the primacy of the Turkish state, and lately, of the Erdoğan regime.
