Cropped Videos and Distorted Statements
The "He Defended the Abuse at the Ensar Foundation" Claim
Distorted
Claim
Fact
The claim rests on the cumhuriyet.com.tr headline "Scandalous remarks from Alparslan Kuytul about the Ensar Foundation". The headline was built by taking one section of the speech, and it left the impression that Kuytul had defended or made light of the abuse.
What is seen when the speech is published in full is this — the sentence about punishment stands immediately before the objection:
"The person who committed that crime must be given the necessary punishment, but to attribute it to an entire foundation would be slander, would be injustice."
The objection is not to the crime, but to the crime being loaded wholesale onto an institution. The two statements are the condition of each other: a do not blame the institution sentence made without punishment being demanded really would be a defence; made after punishment has been demanded, it becomes a measure of justice. The headline left out precisely this first half.
Nor does the measure Kuytul sets change from one institution to another; it looks at two questions: is the person who committed the act a director of the institution, and has the act there acquired continuity and become widespread? If the answer to both is no, responsibility belongs to the person who committed the act. The same measure works for parties, associations and state institutions too.
The document of the distortion, however, is not a statement from the other side but the newspaper's own move: in the face of the reactions that came in, the headline was changed within a short time to "A response to the Ensar Foundation scandal". That the headline changed while the text remained the same shows that what carried the news story was not the text but the headline.
The impression the headline created
cumhuriyet.com.tr announced Alparslan Kuytul's comment on the Ensar Foundation under the headline "Scandalous remarks from Alparslan Kuytul about the Ensar Foundation". A reader who sees such a headline reaches a conclusion without ever opening the text: the speaker has defended the abuse. And the excerpt highlighted in the report did not contain the section that would have broken this impression.
What is in the full speech?
The comment is built on two statements, and both occur in the same paragraph, one after the other: whoever committed the crime must be punished, but the crime cannot be loaded onto an entire institution.
"Some people may do wrong things. The person who committed that crime must be given the necessary punishment, but to attribute it to an entire foundation would be slander, would be injustice."
Once the first half of the sentence is left outside the report, all that remains is the do not blame the foundation part — and read on its own, that part looks like a defence. Yet both the order of the sentence and its meaning are clear: first the punishment of whoever committed the crime is demanded, then it is described who the punishment is addressed to. The objection is not to the punishment, but to its address.
The measure set out does not change from one institution to another
Kuytul makes whether a crime can be attributed to the whole institution depend on two questions:
- Is the person who committed the act a director or a senior member of the institution?
- Has the act there acquired continuity and become widespread?
If the answer to both is no, responsibility belongs to the person who committed the act. The truly important side of this measure is that it was not set up for a single institution: the same measure works for parties, associations and state institutions too. Kuytul's own example is this — if every sin committed within an institution is loaded onto the whole institution, then the whole state would have to be blamed for the sins committed within the borders of the state. Nobody does that; that is, the measure is known to be correct even where it is not applied.
The section carried into the headline
The section the headline was based on is the part of the speech explaining that it cannot be known in advance who is what. Here Kuytul explains that every institution whose door is open is in the same situation, and he names the Furkan Foundation in the same sentence alongside the Ensar Foundation: no institution can read who the person coming through its door really is.
Taken on its own, this section looks like an excuse. Within the speech, however, it is not an excuse but a boundary line: the crime of the person and the responsibility of the institution are separate things, and the two do not pass into each other automatically.
The document of the distortion: the changed headline
The basis of the assessment on this page is not a comment but the newspaper's own move. In the face of the reactions that came in, the headline was changed within a short time to "A response to the Ensar Foundation scandal".
The change shows two things at once. First, that the original headline did not match the text was seen by the publication itself as well — a correction is the quietest form of confession. Second, the meaning the report carries comes not from the text but from the headline: while the text stood without a single one of its words changing, the report turned into a different report solely because the headline changed.
As for the reader who reads the headline and moves on, the correction has no practical effect. The first headline entered circulation; its corrected form did not spread at the same speed. And this is the most lasting side of distortion: it can be taken back, but it cannot be gathered back in.
A step-by-step account of the same method: Cutting through the middle of a sentence: how are clipped videos produced?