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Furkan Foundation

79 entries

Tag collecting the claims raised about the Furkan Education and Service Foundation and the answers given to them.

Access bans on official websites and social media accounts

Furkan Haber reports that alongside the operation, access bans were placed on the movement's official websites and on many members' social media accounts.

Trustees appointed to five companies with no link to the movement

Furkan Haber reports that alongside the operation, trustees were appointed to five private companies having no financial or organic tie to the Furkan Movement.

The "Furkan Intelligence Organisation" and "Execution Squad" Claim

No unit set up under that name exists; the accounts of a court being set up inside the movement, of people being tried there and of punishment being applied are rejected. There is neither a final court ruling nor a single person who says they went through this.

Unfounded

The Claim of Money Laundering in Germany

Money laundering is a grave and technical criminal imputation; it requires concrete evidence and a final ruling. That there are people abroad who hold the same ideas does not show that there is an unlawful financial organisation among them. There is no joint financial structure of the kind claimed.

Unfounded

The Claim That the Furkan Foundation Has Companies

There is no commercial company belonging to the Furkan Foundation. That there are tradespeople and company owners among those who attend the lessons does not make those companies the foundation's. Nor does the fact that measures were applied to some companies in the investigation prove ownership.

Unfounded

Cübbeli Ahmet's claims about the Furkan Movement on CNN Türk

On 7 September 2026, on Ahmet Hakan's CNN Türk programme "Tarafsız Bölge", Cübbeli Ahmet listed grave accusations about the Furkan Movement and Alparslan Kuytul under nine headings. The Movement rejected them all. No trial has begun, yet investigation claims were aired as a settled verdict.

Unfounded

The claim that his "roots are abroad" and that he is linked to foreign powers

The accusation at the centre of the dispute with Interior Minister Süleyman Soylu is a single sentence: "his roots are abroad". Alparslan Kuytul's answer begins the same way — his mother is known, his father is known, the people he meets are known — and it ends by calling the accuser into a mutual curse. To this day not one document has been produced.

Unfounded

"This file is not a criminal file, it is a SILENCE file"

The message Alparslan Kuytul sent from Erzurum Dumlu Prison was published on 1 September 2026 from the Furkan Movement's X account. It says that the purpose behind the detention of 46 people in Istanbul and the arrest of 9 of them is to put an end to the marches and to make those in prison forgotten; it asks that the press statements be continued even if only one person is left.

Was the file filled with evidence, or with slander?

The Furkan Movement's statement on the 2026 operation: when the searches produced no element of a crime, the file was, it says, filled with the statements of people whose hostility to the movement is known and with claims already refuted in court.

If you are sincere in your claim, go ahead!

Alparslan Kuytul invited everyone who calls him an Iran supporter, a Shia, a Wahhabi, a takfiri, an ISIS supporter, outside Ahl al-Sunnah or an enemy of Sufism and the orders to a mubahala: "If you are sure, come; I will bring my wife and my children, and you bring yours — whoever is lying, may their root wither." The invitation still stands.

The claim that the case file contains a FETÖ contact list

According to a claim circulated on 22 August 2026, the investigation file contains a table showing the FETÖ/PDY contacts of the movement's leadership. Two days later one of the lawyers on the case reported that he had shown the post to the prosecutor handling the file in person, and that the prosecutor said "there is definitely no list of this kind in our file".

Unverifiable

The Report That 20 Years in Prison Was Sought for Him

The figure circulated through Anadolu Agency on 23 July 2019 is the sum of the upper limits of the articles listed in the July 2019 indictment; it is not a sentence handed down by a court.

Out of context

The claim that he incited the people to hatred and enmity

The file says that at the 22 April intervention in Adana and the 29 May intervention in Erzin the people were incited to rancour and hatred; on those days not a single crushed flower and not a single thrown stone could be shown.

Unfounded

The claim that materials were smuggled out of the foundation

In a car stopped on 7 February 2018, the foundation's own magazines and handbooks were found; the report wrote this up as "smuggling", and the materials were laid out on the ground and photographed.

Distorted

The claim that Alparslan Kuytul was responsible for the foundation's affairs

The inspection report on page 50 of the indictment stated that Kuytul had never held any office in the executive organ of the foundation; even so, he was tried in detention in that same case file.

Unfounded

The Claim That an Unlicensed Dormitory Was Being Run

The places sealed as unlicensed dormitories belonging to the foundation turned out, in National Education reports and court rulings, to be private dwellings; the seals were lifted and the homes were reopened.

Unfounded

The claim that money gushed out of the safe in the password-protected room

There was money in the safe; but it was the receipted income of a foundation authorised to collect donations, and it came out of the foundation's own safe, not out of anyone's home.

Out of context

The claim that a 3-million-lira racket was run with fake receipts

A fake-receipt story was published on 27 February 2018; yet the police had seized the receipts in the search, and the copies left with the donors had been submitted to the court at the first hearing.

Unfounded

The claim that the Furkan Foundation is a criminal organisation

No aim of gain, no system of sanctions, no secrecy, no victim. The file whose hearings began on 22 January 2019 does not meet even one element of the definition of a criminal organisation.

Unfounded

The claim that he supports terrorism or regards it as legitimate

After the attack on the Adana governor's office on 25 November 2016 he said "rights are not sought by killing innocent people"; two years later he was named together with four separate terrorist organisations.

Unfounded

The claim that the Furkan Foundation has links to terrorist organisations

The documents stating that the foundation had no link to terrorism were inside the case file itself; the reports of the TEM counter-terrorism unit and of MİT had been drawn up more than a year before the operation.

Unfounded

The claim that he was a member of four terrorist organisations at the same time

He was accused of membership at the same time of four organisations that fight one another; when he was arrested the organisations were not even named, and in the final indictment all of the membership charges were withdrawn.

Unfounded

The First Forum Program After His Release

The forum program held on Friday, 13 December 2019, eight days after the release of 5 December 2019: prison memories, the letters that arrived and questions about the court process.

Nine Cases, Three Acquittals: What He Says About the Judiciary

The picture he gave on the TV5 broadcast of 11 December 2019: as of that day 9 cases opened, 3 acquittals, 6 ongoing files, and release at the first hearing in two separate files.

Closed Associations, a Trustee, and Reopened Student Houses

The picture as of 11 December 2019 in his own words: the associations were closed by KHK, a trustee was appointed to the foundation, and the sealed student houses were reopened after the Ministry of National Education's report.

How Did the "An Economic Crisis Is Coming" Remark Enter the Indictment?

A crisis warning from one of his sermons was placed in the indictment of the 30 January 2018 file with the question "how did he know this"; Kuytul explains that this was not a prophecy but a sentence about consequences.

"If They Arrest Me Again, I Am at Home"

His answers, in three separate programmes within the ten days after his release, to the question of being arrested again: the coal-and-diamond analogy, that the appointed hour is but one, and that he is at home.

"We Have No Direct Connection to Any Religious Community"

His answer to the question of which current in the world the Furkan Movement is affiliated with: it has nothing to do with the Salafi line and no organizational tie to any religious community; benefiting from their books is another matter.

14 of the 22 Months in Prison Were Spent in a Single-Person Room

Fourteen months of the 8 February 2018 – 5 December 2019 detention were spent alone in a three-person room; the requests for a roommate were refused on the grounds of an instruction from the Ministry.

Why Was I Arrested? His Own Three Answers

In the written defence he submitted to the court he listed the three reasons he saw behind the operation of 30 January 2018: criticism of the AK Party, the plans of the deep state and, above all, his expounding of tawhid.

The claim that "they are being obstructed because they are enemies of the government"

The thesis presented as the reason for the obstructions does not match the record: he supported the same government's resolution process and welcomed its headscarf regulation.

Unfounded

The claim that "Furkan Foundation's programs pose a security risk"

The justification for the bans was always security. Yet in hundreds of conferences not a single pane of glass was broken, the permitted rally of 29 May 2016 ended without incident, and on 22 April 2017 not a single stone was thrown.

Unfounded

The claim that he was "part of the coup project"

The evidence was a video cut down to under a minute; when the 4.5-minute original of the speech was published, most of those who had shared it corrected their view.

Unfounded

The claim of a "coup-loving foundation" and the Directorate General's examination

The complaint made to BİMER demanding the foundation's closure was left without result by the chief inspector of the Directorate General of Foundations, who examined the same video recording and wrote that it contained nothing constituting an offence.

Unfounded

"He has ties to FETÖ" claim

The claim was investigated by the police before the 30 January 2018 operation, following a tip-off dated 2016: the ByLock, Bank Asya, association and telephone queries all came back empty.

Unfounded

The "He made propaganda for FETÖ" claim

While the indictment writes propaganda for a terrorist organization, the police documents in the same case file write that no involvement, contact or association with FETÖ could be found. The contradiction lies inside a single file.

Unfounded

The "They Resemble FETÖ's Early Years" Claim

A resemblance is not evidence. The possibility of a covert cadre inside state institutions was in fact investigated by the police in 2016-2017; no record was found.

Distorted

The claim that "the Furkan Foundation is part of the FETÖ structure"

The foundation, its founders and its forty-four-member board of trustees were screened by the police on 9 January 2017; no link to any terrorist organization was found, and the foundations audit reached the same conclusion.

Unfounded

The "On the Same Line as the Gülen Community" Claim

On 4 February 2016 Kuytul read Gülen's Asharq al-Awsat interview out from the newspaper and objected to its arguments one by one; the division comes down to whether an Islamic state is necessary.

Unfounded

Does Alparslan Kuytul Support ISIS?

Not a supporter of ISIS but a name that appears on the organisation's death list; his criticisms of ISIS were recorded in 2014, four years before the accusations.

Unfounded

The claim that he supports armed organisations

The claim is older than the 2018 operation: the same question was put and answered on 15 February 2014, and in a record of activity spanning more than thirty years, all of it public, not a single piece of evidence of support has emerged.

Unfounded

The claim that Salafi and takfirist individuals attended his talks

The claim was manufactured out of the middle of a single sentence in the police letter in the 2018 case file; both the beginning and the end of that same sentence say the opposite of the claim.

Out of context

The Claim that He "Supported America in the Afrin Operation"

A single sentence was cut out of a twelve-minute speech made on 19 January 2018, before the operation had even begun; the speech as a whole is not support for America but a warning against it.

Distorted

The "He Defended the Abuse at the Ensar Foundation" Claim

The headline gave the impression that the abuse was being defended; in the full speech the words were "the person who committed that crime must be given the necessary punishment". The newspaper later changed the headline.

Distorted

The "They Held a Secret Tarawih Prayer in the Mosque" Claim

At that time both the mosque and its courtyard were closed, and no one went inside. There is no prayer performed in secret in an enclosed place; there is a prayer that was prevented in the street.

Unfounded

The "He Brought the People Out onto the Streets and Disturbed Public Order" Claim

People gathered not for the tarawih prayer, but for their friends who had been beaten and taken into custody. During the wait, which lasted until nine in the morning, not a single disturbance occurred.

Unfounded

The Claim That They Staged a Prayer Provocation in Adana

On the night of 21 May 2020 in Adana, five or six people wanted to pray the tarawih in a park; when the police said it was forbidden, they left. The beating began not in the park, but on the road as they were moving away.

Unfounded

The "They Attacked the Police" Claim

Those taken into custody obtained reports from forensic medicine and from the hospital, and the footage shows people handcuffed behind the back being struck. On the other side there is no such record.

Unfounded

The "Enemy of Sufism" Claim

The person said to reject Sufism is someone who has given thirty hours of lessons on that very subject. Sufism is held to be necessary today as well; what is rejected is the outlook that loads the attributes of Allah onto a sheikh.

Unfounded

The "he went knowing full well that trouble would break out" claim

In Adana on 22 April 2017 the intervention had begun before Kuytul had even set out: gas, pressurized water and plastic bullets were used against the few hundred people who arrived at the park early.

Out of context

The claim that "there was a state of emergency, and they tried to hold an event despite the ban"

The governor's office did have a ban decision; but that decision concerned the conference. The press statement was on a different subject, statements in Adana did not require permission, and the park chosen was not on the list of banned places.

Partly true

Did the ban decision of the Adana Governor's Office target a hall or a religious community?

The subject of the decision was not a hall but a foundation and the persons deemed connected to it; its area was the whole province and it had no end date. In the field, too, it was applied broadly, not narrowly.

Distorted

The "He Was Found in the Wrong in the Adnan Oktar Case" Claim

The ruling and the damages are real. The ruling came in a single hearing, with no evidence submitted and no defence heard; in 2015, when one document came up, the same lawyers withdrew hundreds of cases.

Partly true

The "He Insulted Adnan Oktar" Claim

The words really were spoken. But they were spoken in answer to a question, in the "may be" mood, and on the basis of public judicial records; the claim leaves out all three of these at once.

Out of context

Attributing the Claim to the "Hatay Police"

The name of an institution was written at the end of the post. There is no statement published to that effect; naming an institution does not mean that the institution gave the information.

Unverifiable

The "They Are Going to Attack Alevi Neighbourhoods" Claim

What is at hand is not an event that happened, but an event said to be going to happen. In the 22 years from 1994 to 2016 there is not a single violent incident the foundation was involved in.

Unfounded

The "Enemy of the Alevis" Claim

The foundation is based in Adana, a province with a dense Alevi population. In twenty-two years there has not been a single incident between the two sides; participants of Alevi origin are in the movement too.

Unfounded

The "if he wants to do politics, let him found a party" claim

Nowhere is there a requirement to found a party in order to express an opinion. The journalists, lawyers and academics who discuss the country's affairs on television have no party either.

Unfounded

The claim that "he criticises the government only because of his own grievance"

The conference cancellations began in 2014; yet he had objected to the invasion of Iraq in 2003 and to Syria policy in 2011 — that is, eleven years before the event the claim counts as the cause.

Unfounded

The claim that "he does not give the Prophet and the sunnah the importance they deserve"

The claim rests not on a sentence but on an impression. Against it stand lesson and conference titles running from 1995 to 2015: Love of the Messenger of Allah, Obedience to the Prophet, The Prophet as a Model.

Unfounded

The claim that "he is a Quranist who says 'the Qur'an is enough for us'"

An answer that objects to those who say "the Qur'an is enough for us" was turned into evidence for the very opposite claim. What was said is plain: the Qur'an cannot be understood without the sunnah.

Unfounded

The Claim That the Members of the Religious Community Are an "Unquestioning Herd"

A blanket imputation made about thousands of people without a single name, incident or record being given. What stands against it is madrasa work, educational activities and an open archive.

Unfounded

The "He Has People Call Him Hocaefendi" Claim

Neither a request nor an encouragement. The title took hold in the second half of the 1990s, as people around him spoke of him that way in his absence; in Turkey male religious teachers are addressed like this anyway.

Unfounded

The "Arrogant and Unreachable Person" Claim

The accusation rests on a single incident: not attending a press statement in August 2014. The person making the claim has never met Kuytul, and not even those who spent years at his side and later left have said such a thing.

Unfounded

The "They Did Not Join the Joint Gaza Action" Claim

The foundation did not take part in the joint press statement of August 2014 as an institution; that is true. But no institutional invitation was made, and the content of the programme and who would take part were left unclear.

Partly true

The claim that the Furkan Foundation is indifferent to the Palestinian cause

Not taking part in one programme was treated as indifference. Yet the rallies, press releases, lessons and the prayer said every Friday, running from 2004 to 2014, are on record and open to the public.

Unfounded

The claim that "he pushes those who question out of the religious community"

There is not a single name, date or incident in the article. The invitation "give names if there are any" has gone unanswered for more than ten years; those who left did so by their own choice.

Unfounded

When did the conference obstructions begin? A 2014-2018 timeline

The obstructions did not begin with the operation of 30 January 2018: the first statement was published on 13 December 2014, and then came İskenderun in 2016 and Adana in 2017.

The claim that "the Furkan Foundation blocked the motorway"

The motorway really was closed. But the closure was the result of the roads being held in advance and of vehicles not being allowed out; as soon as permission for the square came through the road was opened, and the statement ended without incident.

Out of context

Was the İskenderun conference really cancelled on "security" grounds?

Permission for the conference was granted on 11 May 2016, and it was then cancelled on security grounds. In the same period the posters were confiscated and sponsors were pressured; on the same day an open-air program of tens of thousands ended without incident.

Distorted

The claim that "he did not come out into the squares against the coup"

It is true that they did not join the democracy vigils. But on 21 July 2016 they held an anti-coup gathering in a public square with hundreds of people; the objection was not to opposing the coup but to the name given to the protest.

Partly true

The allegation of fraud

In the 22 January 2019 case file there is not a single person who says they were defrauded; the indictment, meanwhile, refutes its own logic of fraud by writing that the expenses were shown as low.

Unfounded

The claim that an ISIS suspect attended the talks and that this shows a connection

A person who attended a talk open to everyone was counted as a "student" and as evidence of an organisational connection. Kuytul's only recorded relationship with ISIS is that his name appeared on the organisation's death list.

Distorted

The claim that some people who left the community joined armed organizations

The names listed are people who left years ago because they did not embrace Kuytul's stance against armed jihad. What lies before us is not the record of a connection but of a break.

Distorted

The claim that the speeches complained of constituted an offence

Following the complaints of the summer of 2016 the original recordings were examined; the report stated that nothing constituting an offence had been found in the video recording, and one complainant withdrew his application.

Unfounded

The claim that the foundation's income was collected off the books

Collecting donations and holding charity bazaars are sources of income written into the foundation's deed; the alleged amount, meanwhile, rose within a few months from 350 thousand to 3 million, and from there to 80 million.

Unfounded

The claim that there is a vault and secret passages in the foundation's building

The place called a "vault" is a study centre opened in 2014 with SODES funding, with its sign hanging at the entrance, which had passed a favourable inspection a month before the operation.

Distorted

The claim of a connection with the United Arab Emirates and Egypt

The report of 31 January 2018 did not write that a connection had been found but that one "was being investigated"; afterwards no document followed, nor did the claim enter any case file.

Unfounded

The claim that Furkan volunteers blocked the path of a man conducting an interview

A member of the public who objected to a man harassing Furkan volunteers, presented as someone who "blocked his path".

Distorted

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