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James Bond has nothing on Tuncay – Metro US

James Bond has nothing on Tuncay

Standing at the entrance to a north Toronto office tower, Tuncay Guney extends a delicate hand and introduces himself: “You are now talking to the most famous agent in the world.”

Speaking through a translator, his tone is sardonic. But he lays out a pretty fair case.

The 36-year-old Turkish refugee claimant and former journalist goes on to describe meetings with Hezbollah chieftains and U.S. senators, a near escape from Turkish intelligence in the company of an Iranian general, close friendships with Kurdish rebel leaders and Iraqi president Jalal Talabani.

“James Bond has nothing on me,” Guney said.

He’s joking again. Sort of. But Guney is not taken lightly in his home country of Turkey. He is the lynch pin with his testimony and tapes in a sprawling trial accusing dozens of prominent Turks of plotting to overthrow their government. Many in Turkey see the trial as the result of a power struggle between the secular military and the pro-Islamist government of the ruling AK Party.

According to Turkish prosecutors, the laby­rinthine ultranationalist cabal, code-named ‘Ergenekon’, backed political assassinations and deadly terrorist attacks.

The trial is expected to stretch beyond 2009.

Today, though, he lives with a roommate in a small house on a busy Willowdale street. He presents a photocopy of a document that he says proves he was granted refugee status last August. As is usual in these cases, the Immigration and Refugee Board would not comment on Guney’s status. When the RCMP is suggested, Guney chuckles.

“I laugh at that,” he said “The RCMP know everything. They are in contact with the Turkish government.”

It’s hard to tell where fact begins and fiction ends though. The RCMP say they have never heard of him.