Yesterday I read a column at Trakya Net Haber which made me really sad. I was not sad because of its content, the article was full of baseless claims with the hope of creating an illusion of a big conspiracy theory against Turkey. Frankly, the author did not write anything that is worth reading or even thinking about for 2 minutes. However, that column reminded me of our, Turkish people’s, tendency to believe in conspiracy theories. When you ask people on the street, most of them think the majority of the world is out there to get us. As a matter of fact, about 10-12 years ago I was one of those people. This may seem like an insignificant thing, however, I think at the aggregate level this tendency creates a lot of problems for Turkey.

When people are willing to believe in claims not based on any sort of fact or information but solely on artifacts, they are also willing to elect politicians who claims to protect people’s interest from these “evil powers”. In fact, all of these problems can easily be solved if we only put some effort into learning about the reality. Once a person starts reading about political history, understanding international relations, at least at a very simple level, becomes quite easy. The one thing we need to do is:

- Stop thinking that there is one giant conspiracy against Turkey, and western powers have nothing better to do but to sit and think about how to take Turkey down. Instead start realizing that international relations is a purely self-interested area where every country is simply trying to protect its own interest. Sometimes there are positive sum games where all the participants can benefit from a common agreement. Some other times there are zero-sum games, meaning one country’s gain is the other one’s lost.

If we can accept this simple platform, try to learn the rules and the players of the game instead of refusing to understand the game at all, we can move so much further and faster.

My hope for 2010 and beyond is an increasing desire to learn the truth and not let ourselves be used by manipulative agendas. We, as Turks, do not need to be afraid that the world is out there to get us. Turkey is an incredible country with enormous potential and we can deal with REAL problems at the international level without falling prey to conspiracy theories.