Trial of the secular sentinels

  “Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when first we practise to deceive.” These famous lines, first penned by Sir Walter Scott for his soap opera poem “Marmion” in 1808, have been given new meaning by the twists and turns of Turkey’s Ergenek on trial, which grows messier by the day. In Scott’s otherwise-largely-forgettable tale, Lord Marmion fancies a rich woman, Clara de Clare, and, with the help of his mistress, a lascivious nun, he forges documents implicating Clare’s fiancé in treason, successfully sending him into exile. In the end, Marmion’s mistress confesses to the forgery, the Lord is killed on the battlefield and Clare is reunited with her knight. The convoluted deception and double-dealing has been mirrored in the Turkish courts — although to this point without the treacherous nuns — since a plot was discovered in 2003 to allegedly overthrow the government of the Justice and Development