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Fact check: Who coined the term 'deep state' and in what context?
Executive Summary
The phrase "deep state" traces linguistically and historically to Turkey's term "derin devlet," used to describe clandestine networks within the Turkish military and security apparatus that operated beyond democratic oversight; scholars identify its English uptake in the late 20th century and its wider popularization through writers like Peter Dale Scott [1] [2]. Academic antecedents such as concepts of a "dual state" and investigations into covert national-security influence—by Hans Morgenthau, George Kennan, David Wise and Thomas Ross—shaped the idea before it re-emerged in political discourse and was adapted by diverse political actors [3] [4].
1. How a Turkish phrase became a global frame for shadow power
The specific coinage of the English phrase "deep state" is rooted in the Turkish expression "derin devlet," which historians describe as arising from Turkey's political environment in the late 20th century where elements of the military, intelligence services, and criminal networks allegedly collaborated to pursue policies—often violent—outside democratic controls. Coverage of those Turkish origins emphasizes the term's descriptive function: characterizing a shadow or parallel system of governance that could include collusion with drug traffickers and extrajudicial actors to combat insurgency and preserve a conception of the republic [2] [5] [1]. That Turkish-born concept provided a ready label for similar patterns elsewhere, allowing analysts and commentators to map the idea onto other states’ covert networks.
2. Intellectual antecedents: the "dual state" and the invisible government
Long before "deep state" entered English, mid-20th-century political theory and investigative journalism advanced analogous concepts. Hans Morgenthau and George Kennan wrote about a "dual state"—a formal, constitutional state alongside a growing national-security apparatus—with concerns about technology-enabled monitoring and unelected influence [3]. Investigative books like David Wise and Thomas Ross’s "The Invisible Government" [6] documented covert national-security activities that bypassed public view and democratic checks. These works built a conceptual bridge from scholarly diagnosis to journalistic exposure, framing the phenomenon as systemic rather than purely conspiratorial [3].
3. Adoption into English-language debate and the role of Peter Dale Scott
Scholars and commentators brought the Turkish term and these antecedent ideas into English-language debates in the 1990s and early 2000s, with Peter Dale Scott often identified as a key popularizer who applied the "deep state" label to networks of unelected officials, security services, and private financiers influencing policy beyond democratic oversight. Scott’s writings—cited in summaries of the term’s evolution—paint the deep state as a loose formation combining state security elements and private actors to wield power without public accountability; his 2007 work is frequently referenced as part of this diffusion into Anglo-American discourse [1] [7].
4. How different camps repurposed the term for political fights
Once translated into English and linked to earlier critiques of managerial or security elites, "deep state" became politically malleable. Analysts note that both left- and right-wing actors have used the term to indict unelected influence: the left emphasizes national-security complex impunity and corporate collusion, while the right often frames it as an entrenched bureaucratic cabal undermining elected officials. Contemporary accounts emphasize variation in use—some writers treat it as sociological diagnosis, others as a conspiratorial shorthand—and warn that the label can obscure specific mechanisms of power by making all unelected influence into a monolithic "state within a state" [7] [4].
5. Reconciling competing claims: a timeline and what each source emphasizes
Synthesis of the available analyses produces a clear timeline: the idea’s practical label arises in Turkey in the late 20th century as "derin devlet," intellectual antecedents appear in mid-century Anglo-American theory and reporting about a "dual" or "invisible" state, and the term enters English-language debate in the 1990s with further popularization through scholars like Peter Dale Scott in the 2000s. Different sources emphasize different causal elements: Turkish historians focus on concrete collusion and violence [2] [5], political theorists stress structural transformations of power and managerial elites [8] [4], and modern commentators highlight how the label has been adapted across the political spectrum [1] [7] [3]. Together these perspectives show that "deep state" is both a specific Turkish-origin term and a broader heuristic rooted in earlier scholarship about unelected power.