On Jan. 22, a car bomb exploded at the gate of a Mogadishu hotel, where a Turkish team was getting ready to welcome Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. No Turkish nationals were among the six victims, yet the suicide attack was interpreted by both Turkish and Western media as an assault on the Turkish presence in Somalia. The jihadist group al-Shabab, also known as al-Qaeda of Somalia, claimed responsibility, and a spokesman for the group said that Turkish officials had been specifically targeted.

In return, one would expect to see some analysis and concern about al-Shabab in the Turkish media. However, the pro-government media — a steadily growing segment — has shown almost no interest in the group, and has rather focused on a different preoccupation: the alleged British conspiracy behind al-Shabab.

After the attack, Yeni Safak, arguably the ideological standard-bearer of the Justice and Development Party (AKP), declared in a headline, “The suspect behind the attack is England.” The two countries most disturbed by the Turkish presence in Somalia are Israel and the United Kingdom, the article explained. “Despite the fact that another organization claimed [responsibility for] the attack, some reliable sources argue that British intelligence is behind it,” the article stated. These “reliable sources” were not identified, and the “organization [that] claimed the attack” — al-Shabab — was not even mentioned by name. On the same day, the British Embassy in Ankara refuted these “illogical and inappropriate claims.”

Perhaps this was an eccentric take by Yeni Safak, a newspaper known for its love of conspiracy theories. But most pro-government writers in the print and social media seemed to agree. Editor-in-chief of the daily Star, who was on Erdogan’s plane during the visit to Somalia, wrote in passing that in the Horn of Africa, Turkey was struggling with the “plots of imperialist states and their subcontractors such as al-Shabab.”