One of Turkey’s most popular columnists, Hurriyet's Ahmet Hakan, in his Feb. 3 column posed questions for German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Hakan wrote, “I am asking bluntly without beating around the bush: Are you furious because the giant third airport to be constructed in Istanbul will be bigger than your Frankfurt airport? Do you want to cause unrest in Turkey just to stop Turkey from building an airport bigger than yours? Please tell us openly: Are you uncomfortable with the growth of Turkish Airlines? Are you doing whatever you can to curtail that growth?

"Did you provoke the Gezi protests? Are you behind the Dec. 17 [corruption probe]? Are you doing whatever you can to sink Turkey?”

These questions, which would sound spooky to anyone not following domestic happenings in Turkey, were significant in their context and timing. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, accompanied by a large delegation, traveled to Berlin Feb. 3 to meet Merkel, one of many agenda items in his loaded schedule. His delegation included a “conspiracy theoretician” who had concocted incongruous theories during the 2013 Gezi Park protests. To some they were ridiculous, to others fantastical and even funny. Economic affairs writer Yigit Bulut had blamed Lufthansa for the Gezi protests, explaining that the third airport planned for Istanbul would become a major hub, causing Frankfurt's airport to lose eminence. Naturally, Lufthansa would then lose ground to Turkish Airlines. Hence, he concluded, the decision to have Merkel push Turkey to instability and block the construction of the third airport.

Thus, a German hand was discovered behind the Gezi protests. The reasoning was that the Gezi protests, the first-ever serious challenge to Erdogan’s rule in Turkey, were a German scheme to curtail Turkey’s potential to economically compete by prodding it to instability.