The past decade has seen marked declines in social trust alongside the growth of generalized suspicion globally. While the macro-level implications of these trends are increasingly evident—from the spread of conspiracy theories to the deterioration of democratic institutions—the reasons that generalized suspicion thrives in widely varying social environments and its effects on how people live their lives remain open questions. I explore these questions in the context of Turkey, a country with a long history of low social trust. Building on interviews with ethnographers whose fieldwork spans more than three decades and every major region of Turkey, this research integrates ethnographers’ accounts of their own experiences of suspicion, conspiracy theories, trust-building, and vulnerability with historical research into the contexts and communities where these ethnographers conducted fieldwork to advance important insights into the origins and quotidian consequences of generalized suspicion.