Basic Information
The Deep State is said to be a group of powerful, anti-democratic forces within Turkey, consisting of members of the Turkish intelligence agencies, military, security, judges, and organized crime. They are said to manipulate the political and economic elites to ensure their own power and lead the country into the direction they chose for it.
This should be considered in light of the fact that until very recently, the Turkish Constitution gave the army a specific duty to protect the constitution - and in particular the secularist vision of Turkey created by Ataturk from the ruins of the Ottoman Empire. Some of the greatest exponents of the Deep State Conspiracy Theory are Islamist political organisations such as the Gulen Movement, who have a vested interest in undermining secularism, and, indeed democracy (at least in the sense that most people would understand it), making the implications of bad faith laid upon the putative Deep State hypocritical at best.
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Game and Story Use
- Any adventures taking place in Turkey might involve this group - especially if the PCs are politically active or otherwise threaten the interests of these people.
- They also might serve as a good model for some (more) fictional group dedicated to preserving the constitution of a nation by whatever means and the plot device of them being presented as a sinister conspiracy by people whose own motives are far from benevolent is almost too good not to copy.
- This is extremely easily recycled in the US which, loathe as they might be to admit it, has quite a bit in common with Turkey in some ways. The Cincinnati would probably make a good choice of conspirators in this case … who their enemies are will depend on the political affiliations of your group.
- Recent developments in US politics have led to the positing of the existence of a similar organisation within the American body politic, representing entrenched interests within the machinery of state and the media/political class and operating against any significant change of direction or anything else they perceive to be against their collective interests.
- Speaking of which this would appear to be a tacit admission of something along these lines by someone in a position to know. Whether his reference to the "Deep State" was meant to be humorous or not the end result is distinctly chilling.