Mobilized by Distrust: Climate Conspiracism and Conspiratorial Civic Action

• In Event: Environmental Sociology Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 17: Community, Place, and Local Engagement

Abstract

This paper examines the rise of climate conspiracism in Turkey as a socially embedded form of political meaning-making and civic mobilization. Moving beyond views of conspiracy theories as irrational deviations or individual misbeliefs, it interprets them as interpretive tools for navigating shifting relations of global power, trust, and national identity. While climate skepticism in the global North is frequently associated with anti-science discourse, and fossil fuel interests, the Turkish case reveals a different configuration in which conspiratorial narratives draw energy from developmentalist anxieties, anti-imperialist critiques, religious imaginaries, and nativist reinterpretations of environmentalism. Notably, this variant is not uniformly anti-environmental; rather, it reframes climate governance as an external imposition on national sovereignty and economic autonomy, a framing that may resonate in contexts shaped by uneven development and contested integration into global climate regime.

Drawing on media analysis and debates surrounding climate policy, the study traces how transnational conspiratorial narratives are localized through historical concerns over global inequality and political dependence. It highlights continuities between the COVID-19 pandemic and climate change conspiracies, showing how prior networks and vocabularies of distrust have been repurposed to contest climate governance. The paper introduces the concept of conspiratorial civic action to describe emerging forms of mobilization that operate through recognizably civic repertoires while challenging institutional authority outside conventional democratic channels. By situating climate conspiracism within Turkey’s evolving political landscape, the study contributes to environmental sociology by complicating dominant models of climate denial and suggesting that opposition to climate governance may be rooted not only in anti-science sentiment or corporate lobbying, but also in broader struggles over development, sovereignty, and national identity that may extend beyond the Turkish case.

Authors

• Sinan Erensü, Bogazici University, Istanbul

• Daniela Kizildag, Bogaziçi University

• Sena Akkoc, University of Oregon