Gareth Jenkins, a journalist writing for conservative American think tank the Jamestown Foundation,’ has blasted the so-called Erkenegon case in Turkey recently. “There is little doubt that the Ergenekon investigation is rooted in fact. But what is alarming about the indictment is that it extrapolates from a kernel of truth through rumor, hearsay, unsubstantiated supposition and simple invention into the realms of fantasy,” Jenkins wrote in a paper on the Ergenekon case published Tuesday.

 The paper notes that the Ergenekon case was heralded as a victory for democracy by pro-government media. Jenkins underlined that some publications went so far as to say that virtually every terrorist organization that operated in Turkey for the past 20 years was a brainchild of the Ergenekon gang.

“One of the most startling claims in the indictment is that Ergenekon was cooperating with – and in many cases had both created and subsequently controlled – the entire range of terrorist groups in Turkey, ranging from leftists and Kurdish nationalists through to violent Islamists; and was responsible for almost every political assassination in the country since the early 1990s,” wrote Jenkins.

He pointed to one of the examples of such an argument where some columnists “proclaimed that the indictment proved that Ergenekon had ‘played a major role in the formation of the (outlawed) Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), the religious fundamentalist (Turkish) Hizbollah, Marxist-Leninist Revolutionary People’s Liberation Party/Front (DHKP-C) and the fundamentalist Islamic Great East Raiders Front (İBDA-C).”

The claim is a fiction, wrote Jenkins. Nevertheless, he stated that the argument “is a convenient one for conspiracy theorists and those non-violent Turkish Islamists whose own horror at the atrocities committed in the name of their religion by militant groups invariably results in them attempting to shift responsibility for them to other – usually mysterious – forces.”

To a large degree I can agree with Jenkins. Turkey is a country in which conspiracy theories thrive. Turks seem to be happy when they have a conspiracy to talk about, even if the conspiracy is made up by themselves. As such, the Erkenegon case is typically Turkish; there may be (quite) some truth to it, but it’s so dramatically overdone that it’s difficult to take the case (conspiracy) seriously.

Having said that, according to Jenkins there most certainly is something going on; the AKP and the prosecutor are exaggerating it, coming up with wild theories, etc., but, according to this expert, there most certainly is a ‘group’ active that tries to overthrow the democratically elected government by creating chaos and, yes, even using violence. This group is, he asserts, ‘a hangover from the heyday of Turkey’s “deep state,” which in the ‘50s and ‘90s fought against communism and the PKK.’

Be that as it may - and I agree with Jenkins that there could very well be such an organization and that some of the individuals arrested are indeed involved in it - it is difficult to take the case seriously because of the approach of the prosecutor and of AK Parti (Justice and Development Party) leaders. The ones involved in this group should be punished. But it’s clear that the explanation offered by said individuals is not correct.  And that is problematic, all the more so because those truly involved in aforementioned organization should be condemned by everyone.