Republic of Conspiracies: Cross-Border Plots and the Making of Modern Turkey

Abstract

In August 1935, British authorities tipped off Ankara about a team of assassins who were allegedly headed for Turkey to assassinate its president Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. Within a month, the Turkish authorities arrested a number of suspects in the Turkish-Syrian borderland, and began to pressure London to extradite the Circassian masterminds of the plot who were then living in the British mandate territories of Palestine and Transjordan. This article examines how the British tip-off quickly evolved into an episode fully publicized by the Kemalist regime, exploring the ways in which the alleged conspiracy helped consolidate Ankara’s ideological positions at home and pursue its long sought-after policies abroad. This curious episode illustrates the political and socio-economic relevance of imperial networks that continued to crisscross the post-Ottoman Middle East. On a more analytical level, the conspiracy helps us understand the complex interaction between intelligence and rumors, and in so doing, shows both empirical limits and opportunities in approaching them as a field of historical inquiry.