A guide to reading conspiracy

After the initial effect of the Wikileaks leaks, which first made the world endlessly curious and then drowned it in news, information or gossip, the expected question arrived right on time. Who holds the tap of these leaks? The story of "the known perpetrator," who earlier had a brilliant record over the Afghanistan documents, and whose story seemed sympathetic and convincing in the first days, could not this time escape setting off every suspicion. To make it hard to believe that such an organized job could be pulled off with the anarchist fantasies of an angry soldier, the story gives itself away with every passing hour, and that question knocks at the door again and again: Whose job is this?

The usual answer to the usual question is generally the first thing that comes to mind: whoever this job has served most, the perpetrator should be sought there. This is exactly where one must stop, because, first, up to now no good accounting has appeared of whom this event has really served, or of how much damage the continuation of the leaks will do to whom by raiding whose nest. Second, the standard logic of the detective, that is, the "whom did it serve" logic, is only one of the paths to be followed in solving a murder and does not always lead to the right answer. Conspiracy theories, too, can reach somewhere by following this path, but the extra disadvantage of conspiracy theories that takes them away from reality is their hungry suspicion that beyond every truth that emerges there is a larger construct. The disappointment created by an event whose causes have been revealed is compensated by a larger imaginary construct.

The sociological approach, on the other hand, knows that events may not always produce the results their perpetrators want, and in fact often produce the exact opposite results. For example, intrigues organized by greedy types can easily sink into wrong calculations, and with these calculations stir things up so as to confuse the minds of intelligent people, and those who see it do not even believe that what has happened could have rested on such simple calculations. A Greek proverb says, "If you want to make God laugh, make clever plans," and there is a wise lesson in this about the difference in intention between plans, especially intrigues, and what actually happens.

However, criticisms directed at conspiratorial thinking never mean that there are no conspiracies in the world. We are only saying that a conspiracy cannot be understood with more realistic data without taking the human factor well into account. Even if there is a conspiracy, we must also take into account the possibility that it need not work for the benefit of those who carried it out. The timing and planning that Wikileaks followed in leaking the documents sufficiently show that this job has very specific targets, but truly it does not yet show what the target is. If one is going to insist on the principle that "whichever country profits from this is behind the job," it could even be said that Turkey is behind this job, because the only country that has so far suffered no real harm from the exposure of this information and has perhaps already benefited considerably seems to be Turkey. Yet if the usual suspects we know are behind this job, they should not have let Turkey come out of it gaining so much prestige.

Besides, apart from what was heard with the flavor of top secret gossip, we have still not come across any different information that would shock the world.

In my view, each of the documents leaked by Wikileaks, whatever the purpose for which it was leaked, has in total an important effect because of the impressions it has created. That is the deep consciousness it has created about how afflicted by human weaknesses the field called diplomacy and conspiracy is. It must be noted that, especially regarding the legendary intelligence power of the US, knowing through which actors, and through what kinds of data collection and evaluation paths, the news-gathering and synthesizing processes that make up this power take place is of inestimable importance.

Knowing this can, for example, ensure that people of a country in foreign policy do not regard themselves with contempt. The direct effect of the shattering, like an idol, of the divine power attributed to the US's knowledge, power and influence may be that people give up seeing themselves at the level of a servant to this power. Unfortunately, in many foreign policy analyses the excessive power and intelligence imagined of the US, while leading to constructing it like a god, makes one forget that in being hostile to it with these delusions one is making oneself a servant before it. To understand this it is enough to look at what has been said about the BOP or what has been said about the missile shield. Leave aside the superpower image constructed by pro-US analyses, of course; look rather at those who appear to be against it.

Now, whom does the collapse of powers that have become idols, whether through their own claims or through the submission of those who constructed them, serve? We can look from here too, I think. In my view, the picture does not look bad at all in terms of humanity's liberation from this kind of idolization.