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A veteran Turkish politician has drawn criticism over the past few days, after he accused “Zionist bankers” of conspiring to dominate the world and claimed a small cadre of Jews had destroyed the American monetary system.

Burhan Kuzu, a founding member of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party, had served as a member of the Turkish parliament until this June’s election. He nevertheless remains an influential figure within the party, and a confidant of President Erdogan.

Last Wednesday, Kuzu claimed via Twitter that a group of some 300 “Zionist bankers of Jewish descent” had taken control of the printing of US currency, as part of a larger plot to ‘run the world’.

“This is not a hoax!” Kuzu wrote. “The American people think that the dollar is US money. However, the paper bills are printed and controlled by just 12 families of Zionist bankers of Jewish descent, whose numbers do not exceed 300.”

This group of “Zionist bankers”, Kuzu claimed, “runs the world”.

To back up his claims, Kuzu cited the end of America’s use of the Gold Standard in monetary policy, claiming that the switch to fiat money was evidence of the plot by “Zionist bankers”.

“Before 1972, the dollar was pressed for gold; now it's just blank paper.”

During the mid-20th century, the US moved away from the Gold Standard – which coupled the US dollar to a fixed quantity of gold – beginning in the Great Depression, when the Federal Reserve ended the convertibility of dollars to gold.

From 1944 to 1971, the US instated a limited Gold Standard, sometimes referred to as a “gold window”, in which foreign holders of non-US currency pegged to the dollar could exchange currency for gold at a rate of $35 per ounce.

This system, known as the ‘Bretton Woods System’, was ended by President Richard Nixon in 1971, based in part on the advice of American Jewish economist Milton Friedman.

Anti-Semitic hoaxes, including the famous ‘Protocols of the Elders of Zion’, have relied on the canard of Jewish bankers conspiring to subvert economic and political systems in countries around the world.

Since the elimination of the gold window, fringe groups including the Nation of Islam and Aryan Nations have accused the Federal Reserve System and the fiat monetary system of serving the interests of a group of a global conspiracy run by Jewish bankers.