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.