Obstruction of Conferences and Pressure
Did the ban decision of the Adana Governor's Office target a hall or a religious community?
Distorted
Claim
Fact
The ban was communicated through the police on Friday, 21 April 2017. The following day a conference on the theme The Exemplary Human Being: The Prophet was to be held in Adana, in the Aqua Park hall.
In its own words, the decision of the Adana Governor's Office reads:
the banning of all activities sought to be carried out throughout our province in connection with the event in question, under the name of the Furkan Education and Service Foundation or by persons having a connection with or affiliation to this foundation…
The phrase in connection with the event in question in the middle of the sentence ties the scope to a single programme. The rest of the sentence, however, is institutional: the subject of the ban is not a hall but a foundation and the persons deemed to be connected with or affiliated to it, the area is the whole province, and no end date is written.
To describe the decision as a measure concerning a hall skips both of these layers at once. The implementation did not fit the narrow reading either: the following day a press statement whose subject was not that conference was prevented in a park that was not on the list of the ten or so places the governor's office had banned.
There is one further point that points in the same direction. The subject of the banned conference was the example set by the Prophet; when the reason for the ban was asked, the answer attributed to the deputy governor was that programmes with this content were banned.
Whichever of the two readings is correct, the description of an ordinary measure of place and time does not stand. If the narrow reading is correct, the press statement was outside the scope of the decision. If the broad reading is correct, what was at issue was not a measure against an event but the barring of an institution from activity throughout the province.
Because the text of the decision is not held as a document in the archive, it is given here as Kuytul recounted it in the interview dated 1 July 2018, without abridgement.
When did the decision come, and what did it land on?
The Furkan Foundation was preparing a conference in Adana on the theme The Exemplary Human Being: The Prophet. The municipality's Mimar Sinan Open-Air Theatre was requested first and was not granted. The Aqua Park hall was then rented. One day before the conference, on Friday, 21 April 2017, the ban decision was communicated through the police.
Up to this point it may look like a hall being found unsuitable. The text of the decision itself, however, is written in two different languages at once.
The two layers of the text
the banning of all activities sought to be carried out throughout our province in connection with the event in question, under the name of the Furkan Education and Service Foundation or by persons having a connection with or affiliation to this foundation…
The phrase in connection with the event in question in the middle of the sentence is narrowing: it ties the ban to a single programme. This phrase is inside the text and must not be left out.
Yet the rest of the sentence does not narrow, it widens:
- The subject of the ban is not an event but an institution — the work to be carried out under the foundation's name.
- The scope goes beyond the institution as well: persons deemed to be connected with or affiliated to the foundation are included too. The decision itself does not draw the boundary of these two words; who falls within the scope is looked at afterwards.
- The area is not the hall that was rented but the whole province.
- There is no end date.
In other words, the text places a narrow subject in a wide frame. No such sentence is needed for a hall not being able to hold the crowd; writing the name of the hall is enough.
What measure did the law permit?
Article 17 of Law No. 2911 on Meetings and Demonstration Marches gives the governor the power to postpone a particular assembly by at most one month; banning, on the other hand, is possible only if there is a clear and imminent danger that an offence will be committed. Article 34 of the Constitution and Article 3 of the same law also say that everyone may hold unarmed and non-aggressive meetings without prior permission.
The measure of the law is a particular assembly and a particular period. In the text of the decision both have given way to an institutional description.
According to which reading was it applied?
The answer to this question was given the next day. The subject of the press statement that was to be made on 22 April 2017 was not the banned conference; it was Cem Küçük's words about those who took part in the Mavi Marmara. There was no requirement to obtain permission for a press statement in Adana, and Atatürk Park, the place chosen, was not among the ten or so spots at which the governor's office had banned statements.
Kuytul reminded the police chief of these things at the scene. The chief did not say otherwise; without even seeing the need to ask the governor, he gave the order to intervene. So while the decision could be read narrowly on paper, in the field it was applied broadly.
The question of content
The second sign that the target was not a place is the subject of the banned programme. The title of the conference was on the example set by the Prophet. When the reason for the ban was asked, the answer attributed to the deputy governor was that programmes with this content were banned.
A hall being found unsuitable and the subject of a programme being deemed objectionable are not the same thing. The first is a technical finding and is solved with another hall. The second takes the subject of the decision away from security and carries it somewhere else.
Where exactly is the distortion?
To describe the ban as an ordinary measure of place and time leaves both of the two readings out of account.
If the narrow reading is correct — and the narrowing phrase is inside the text — the ban belonged only to that conference and the next day's press statement was outside its scope; in that case there was no basis for the intervention. If the broad reading is correct, what was at issue was not the postponement of an event but the barring of an institution, and of the people deemed close to it, from activity in an entire province, with no period stated.
This distinction is not an unimportant detail. A measure about a place disappears once another hall is found. An institutional ban, however, does not go away whatever you do — because what is banned is not the event, it is you.
Separate entries from the same day: the claim that "there was a state of emergency, and they tried to hold a programme despite the ban" and the claim that "the programmes pose a security risk".
Because the text of the decision and the words attributed to the deputy governor are not held as documents in the archive, they are given as Kuytul recounted them in the interview dated 1 July 2018.