Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.

A Turkish news station aligned with the country’s ruling AKP party recently aired an antisemitic documentary entitled “The Mastermind,” Al-Monitor reported late last week.

The film, described by the publication as a sequel to “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” argued that Turkey had fallen victim to a “Mastermind,” which it identified as the Jews.

According to the report, the film echoed the rhetoric of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who several months ago voiced a theory that Turkey had fallen victim to a “Mastermind.” According to Al-Monitor, A Haber, the “news station” which aired the film, acts “like a propaganda outlet” for Erdogan and his AKP party.

The film claimed that the so-called Mastermind “rules the world, burns, destroys, starves, wages wars, organizes revolutions and coups, and establishes states within states.” It even featured libels about Jewish culture, and blamed the 2003 Iraq war on a Jewish search for the Ark of the Covenant.

Last year, Erdogan denied charges that he was antisemitic, even though he called Israel a “terrorist state” and accused it of “surpassing Hitler in barbarism.”

By many accounts, antisemitism is on the rise in Turkey. Last year, there was a violent riot at the Israeli embassy in Turkey. Last summer, a Turkish lawmaker also said that antisemitism in Turkey was worse than that in Iran, citing a study showing that 69 percent of Turkish people harbored antisemitic beliefs.

A few days ago, The Washington Post reported that AKP party official Fuat Ozgur Calapkulu had tweeted “The caliph is coming, get ready.” The official later said that the tweet was intended as a joke.