For me, Tuncay Guney, the main source of the Ergenekon Case, was a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma.
I have finally found the key.
As the darkness is dispersed and this interesting person is being exposed under the spotlights of the state television for hours, it is seen that he is not a mystery anymore.
* * *
What was interesting about him?
He is a gay journalist, who claims that he converted to Judaism and become a rabbi in Canada.
Isn't this interesting enough? OK...
He was detained after he stole a car in 2001. During his interrogation, he told that he was an aide of Veli Kucuk, a powerful, behind-the-scene general. He claimed that the general established a clandestine nationalist organization, which included army officials, bureaucrats and journalists. Guney said that they were on the verge of overthrowing the Islamist government. He was just a 20-something, but giving away so many important names and connecting them to each other without a pause.
* * *
But why isn't he interesting anymore?
Because the extended TV coverage proves that he is just a sociopath, who were being used by some other people. With the content and the way of his talk...
Firstly, he says that the United States helped to establish the Ergenekon gang. Then he decides that the gang is actually anti-American and pro-Russian. He starts with Carlos the Jackal's Istanbul visit in 1970s, ends up with the Shangai Five and the infamous creationist Adnan Oktar.
Simply, he is the Verbal Kint of Ergenekon (well, Keyser Söze was really a Turkish character), but there is a difference: Verbal Kint was smart enough to write his own story instantly. Tuncay Guney is just reciting what was given to him.
Moreover, it is now proved without doubt that the confession video, which is only publicized partly, was actually shot after 2005, not in 2001.
* * *
And who is using Tuncay Guney?
I am still not sure if it is the only group that uses Guney as an agent, but the usual suspect is the Fethullah Gulen movement. After all, Guney was the founder of a TV channel which was belonged to this movement and he was once a teacher of a Gulen-owned school. Here is a must-read article by the Middle East Quarterly, if you want to understand what this movement tries to do in Turkey.
And the fact that the key witness is such a strange figure is a disaster for the Ergenekon investigation, if it's really legal as it was alleged and not a political persecution against the secular opposition. I worry even worse that the sole purpose might be a public attack to undermine the reliability of the army.
Bottomline: Tuncay Guney is not the one to be ashamed of the current travesty. The prosecution and some police officials, who suddenly decided to take this sociopath seriously after seven years on, should be ashamed.
