Conspiracy theories are sweeping through Turkey and Russia, where government officials and political analysts are accusing the CIA, Israeli intelligence or the French people of masterminding the terrorist attacks in Paris and blaming the Muslims for the violence.
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is feeding the rumor mill in Turkey, a key NATO ally, while pro-Kremlin journalists and think tank specialists are spreading anti-Western fantasies in Russia,
the Financial Times reports.
"The duplicity of the West is obvious," Erdogan told reporters in the Turkish capital of Ankara on Monday. "As Muslims we have never sided with terror or massacres. Racism, hate speech, Islamophobia are behind these massacres."
"The culprits are clear," he added. "French citizens undertook this massacre and Muslims were blamed for it."
Erdogan also denounced
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for joining other world leaders, who led about 1.5 million people on a solidarity march to protest Islamic terrorism after radical Islamist gunmen killed 17 people in Paris last week. The dead included journalists at a satirical newspaper that regularly mocked the prophet Muhammad and shoppers at a Jewish grocery store.
Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu represented Turkey at the march, which was also attended by Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas.
Erdogan welcomed Abbas on an official visit to Turkey on Tuesday in an elaborate ceremony surrounded by soldiers dressed in historic Turkish military garb, an event widely ridiculed on Twitter.
Erdogan’s conspiracy theories were echoed by Ankara Mayor Melih Gokcek, a member of the ruling Justice and Development Party.
"Mossad is definitely behind such incidents ... It is boosting enmity towards Islam," he said, referring to the Israeli intelligence service.
In Moscow, the widely read Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper asked: "Did America stage the terror attack in Paris?"
Alexander Zhilin of the Moscow Center for the Study of Applied Problems accused the Obama administration of launching the attacks to retaliate against French President Francois Hollande for urging the European Union to lift sanctions on Russia imposed after Moscow’s intervention in Ukraine.
Alexei Martynov of the International Institute for New States blamed the CIA.
"For the last 10 years, so-called Islamist terrorism has been under the control of one of the world’s leading intelligence agencies," he told the pro-government Internet website LifeNews.
"I am sure that some American supervisors are responsible for the terror attacks in Paris, or in any case the Islamists who carried them out."
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