This blog has touched several times on Obama related conspiracy theories.
Whilst the 'birther' craze seems to have rather peaked - where else could it go after one of its proponents was elected President - conspiracy theories about Obama in Muslim majority nations continue apace. In the Sunni world, these centred for a period on claims that Obama is a Shia Muslim and therefore plotting with Iran against Sunni Islam. A second variation on this comes via the pro-AKP press in Turkey, for whom the failed 15 July coup remains their central point of reference.
In the war on terror section in the English language webpages of the Daily Sabah comes this gem, reporting on Turkish parliamentary investigations into the work of exiled Turkish cleric Fethullah Gulen. For a period Gulen, who did much to combat secularism in Turkey, was close to President Erdogan. Their falling out appears to have been of Stalin versus Trotsky proportions, and as Gulen is the main suspect for the coup, the Turkish press has free reign to make whatever accusations they wish about him. The most recent are claims that Obama's relatives in Kenya have received free education at Gulen schools in Kenya, allowing of course the rabid and the paranoid to dot the i's and cross the t's from there.
Should Trump fail to extradite Gulen to Turkey from his hideout in Pennsylvania, we can no doubt expect to see a series of paranoid claims emerge about President Trump. Which of course, rather takes us back to where we started.....
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