Jean Baudrillard and "The Arab Spring" as a simulacrum

According to the French sociologist and philosopher Jean Baudrillard, we have entered the era of hyperreality where the era of reality has come to an end. Baudrillard who claims that we are faced with fabricated facts in the public sphere reveals his critique of the western civilization model through the concept of simulacrum and the theory of simulation. Simulacrum is a term that describes the perceived appearance instead of the truth. According to Baudrillard, much of what is said in the name of history can be explained through simulacrum, because managing the perception of the masses by producing a new reality from the forgotten past is one of the methods that the ruling ideology always uses to consolidate its power. After the Cold War, the perceptions of security and threat had changed all over the World but especially in the United States of America where the Middle East settled in the core of the power struggle with the increase in the search for new markets and resources of the sovereign states. The struggle, which had begun with the Gulf Crisis in 1991, continued with the invasion of Iraq using the justification made by 'war on global terrorism' and the moral justification of 'freedom' after the September 11 attacks, finally reached to the "Arab Spring". Within the scope of Baudrillard's simulation theory, the purpose of this study is to discuss the relevance of the Arab Spring with the truth and to show that it is a simulacrum based on a reality that is produced which actually aims to manage the perception of the masses.