FETÖ and Gülen Community Claims
The "He Criticised Gülen Only After 15 July" Claim
Unfounded
Claim
Fact
The claim runs as follows: Alparslan Kuytul did not criticise the Gülen movement for years, and began to criticise it only after the coup attempt of 15 July 2016 — that is, at a time when criticism no longer carried a cost.
The records show the opposite, and every one of them is dated:
- 1998 — the talk entitled "Neither Will You Have a Place Left in Hearts, Nor a Name in Turkey".
- 2005 — the conference in Adana entitled "The Essentials of Our Faith and Interfaith Dialogue".
- 3 February 2014 — the talk entitled "The Government and the Community Must Repent!".
- 16 February 2014 — the answer he gave to the question about the Turkish Olympiads.
- 20 February 2014 — the assessment "Where does the policy Fethullah Gülen is pursuing lead?".
- 4 February 2016 — the article "Is There No Need to Work for an Islamic State?" in the magazine Furkan Nesli.
The whole list comes before the coup attempt. What is more, these dates fall in the years when the movement was at its strongest and criticising it was at its most costly.
The title of the talk dated 3 February 2014 is also worth noting: "The Government and the Community Must Repent!" At a time when the two sides had fallen out with one another, the same sentence was addressed to both. This is not a side chosen afterwards but a distance taken on the day.
The subject of the record of 16 February 2014 on this list is dealt with on a separate page: the "He supported the Turkish Olympiads" claim.
Why does the claim sound convincing?
After 15 July 2016 there was no one left who did not criticise the Gülen movement. Names that had been seen for years in the same halls and had taken part in the same programmes suddenly began to form harsh sentences. In that kind of noise words spoken earlier cease to be heard — and where everyone is speaking after the event, one person having spoken beforehand does not sound convincing either.
For that reason the answer to this claim is not commentary but dates.
The order of the dates
The oldest of the records in our hands is the talk of 1998 entitled "Neither Will You Have a Place Left in Hearts, Nor a Name in Turkey". In 2005 a conference entitled "The Essentials of Our Faith and Interfaith Dialogue" was given in Adana — interfaith dialogue was in those years the movement's most visible project.
February 2014 carries three separate records: on the 3rd of the month "The Government and the Community Must Repent!", on the 16th the answer given to the question about the Turkish Olympiads, on the 20th the assessment "Where does the policy Fethullah Gülen is pursuing lead?". On 4 February 2016, in turn, a long article was published in the magazine Furkan Nesli.
The meaning of this sequence is that the criticism has a chain of records reaching back to eighteen years before the coup attempt, and that it was repeated in writing five months before that attempt as well.
3 February 2014: the title is itself an answer
In those days the argument was split into two camps and everyone was expected to choose a side. The title of the talk does not meet that expectation: "The Government and the Community Must Repent!" It is a sentence addressed to both sides at once.
This detail brings down the second leg of the claim as well. If Kuytul's criticism of the community had been a matter of falling in behind one side, he would not have made the same call to the government on the same day.
2016: what the criticism was about
The article dated 4 February 2016 goes beyond the question of whether he criticised or not and shows what he criticised. The article takes up line by line the interview Gülen gave to the newspaper Asharq al-Awsat, published in England. The thesis objected to is this: if people in a country can live their religion freely, there is no need for them to try to found an Islamic state.
According to Kuytul this amounts to disregarding the social and legal rulings of the religion; the result is the integration of Muslims into the system and the taking root of "moderate Islam". The same article also lists interfaith dialogue, the Turkish Olympiads and the closeness kept to Israel and America among the mistakes.
The criticism, then, did not arise from the headings everyone voiced after the coup attempt — schools, examination questions, the placing of cadres — but from a difference of ideas that had been argued for far longer.
A note on the records of 1998 and 2005
For these two records we have a title and a date. We put forward no claim here about the content of the talks; the only thing we are saying is that these titles were put on record on those dates. That is in any case what brings the claim down: eighteen years before 15 July 2016 a talk was given on this subject.
Why do we say "Unfounded"?
Because the claim is not an interpretation but a statement about a date: "only after 15 July". Statements about dates are tested against the record, and this record exists. While a single one of them would be enough to bring the claim down, we have six separate dates.
It is fitting to close with a sentence he himself spoke years ago: "Even if you cut off my head, this head will speak again."
Related topics: the "He supported the Turkish Olympiads" claim and the "They Resemble FETÖ's Early Years" claim.