The claim that he said "may it be blessed" about the coup
Unfounded
Claim
Fact
On the night of 15 July 2016, at around 11.30 p.m., while the Friday exegesis lesson in Adana was still being broadcast live, Alparslan Kuytul was told of the coup attempt. At the end of the lesson he gave a few minutes of comment. The claim was produced out of that comment.
The sentence that occurs in the speech is this:
"May He make it so that this coup is not a blow to Islamic work, that Islamic work is affected by it for the better, and that it turns out to the good of the Muslims."
This is not congratulation; it is a prayer that the harm of the coup should not touch the Muslims. The words "may it be blessed" occur nowhere in the speech.
In the video put into circulation, the opening sentence of the speech was taken, the prayer was jumped to immediately afterwards, and everything in between was thrown away. Among what was thrown away are the warning "Look what days we have come to. We have come back to the days of coups", and the sentence about hundreds of thousands of people possibly being taken into custody: "perhaps we too will be among them".
Nor is the cutting point a matter of chance. The clip ends immediately before the sentence that refutes the claim on its own:
"However much we have criticised this government from the beginning, we would take no pleasure in their being brought down by a coup."
There is a further, separate claim built on the same night: the claim that "he hoped for deliverance from the coup". That page is not about the cutting technique but about the whole of the stance taken over that week.
Two texts side by side
The whole of this claim rests on a technique of editing. The easiest way to see the technique is to read the full speech and the version put into circulation one after the other.
The speech in full — 15 July 2016, around 11.30 p.m.
The text below is given without abridgement. A page that is itself about a claim of clipping cannot abridge the text.
"During the lesson — you will have been following it online — at around 10 p.m. the Turkish Armed Forces seized the administration of the country, and at this moment a coup has been carried out. Look what days we have come to. We have come back to the days of coups. At this moment we cannot know what state the President, the Prime Minister and the government are in. Since the General Staff has made such an announcement, it must be that they too are in custody. What will happen after this is dark! TRT's broadcast has been cut and an announcement is to be made. Now watch what comes after this: in this atmosphere of a coup perhaps hundreds of thousands of people will be taken in. Perhaps we too will be among them. What will happen after this is dark! May God not bring upon our nation troubles it cannot bear, may He not confront it with such troubles. May He make it so that this coup is not a blow to Islamic work, that Islamic work is affected by it for the better, and that it turns out to the good of the Muslims. However much we have criticised this government from the beginning, we would take no pleasure in their being brought down by a coup. There is no telling where this coup will go. May God protect the innocent, may He not bring calamities down upon the heads of the innocent. Let us see what happens now. Know this: God is the helper of the Muslims and of Islamic work. We may pass through some hard days, but afterwards the sun will rise again, and Islamic work will go on its way again far more strongly.
Everyone must be ready for anything. But in the end the sun will rise again. Be sure of that. Forgive me any wrong. Peace be upon you."
The version that was served up
"During the lesson — you will have been following it online — at around 10 p.m. the Turkish Armed Forces seized the administration of the country, and at this moment a coup has been carried out. May He make it so that this coup is not a blow to Islamic work, that Islamic work is affected by it for the better, and that it turns out to the good of the Muslims."
What was taken out?
Two sentences were left and everything between them deleted. Among what was deleted are these:
- "Look what days we have come to. We have come back to the days of coups" — the coup being described as a disaster.
- The fear that the President and the government might be in custody.
- "What will happen after this is dark!" — it occurs twice in the speech.
- "In this atmosphere of a coup perhaps hundreds of thousands of people will be taken in. Perhaps we too will be among them."
- "May God protect the innocent, may He not bring calamities down upon the heads of the innocent."
And the sentence that comes immediately after the point where the clip ends: "...we would take no pleasure in their being brought down by a coup."
The cutting point is not a coincidence
The clipping does not merely take the sentence that gave rise to the claim and throw away the context that explains it; it stops exactly one step before the sentence that refutes the claim. Had it run on for one second more, the clip would have given the lie to its own headline.
The moment at which the speech was made matters too. At 11.30 p.m. TRT's broadcast had been cut, nobody knew where the President was, and Turkey believed the coup was being carried out within the chain of command, that is, by the army as a whole. Even while he believed this to be so, Kuytul said in that same speech that he did not consent to the coup.
The technique itself
What is done here is not a difference of interpretation. When two sentences are picked out of a speech and the link between them is severed, a sentence the speaker never uttered is put into his mouth. The test is simple: if the recording is allowed to run on a little longer, does the headline still stand? In this case, had the clip lasted a few seconds more, the headline would have refuted itself.
That is why the real question is not "which sentence did he say" but "which sentences were thrown away".
An official body examined the video as well
On the strength of the impression created by the clipped video, a complaint was made to BİMER on 11 August 2016 demanding that the foundation be closed. The chief inspector of the Directorate General of Foundations who examined the complaint watched not the short video circulating on social media but the original recording, and wrote that he had come across nothing in the video recording that constituted an offence. The document itself, and the limits the report sets on itself, are under a separate heading: the claim of a "coup-loving foundation" and the Directorate General's examination.
The documents and dates on this page belong to the period after 15 July 2016 and to the case file of 2018.