His defence at the terrorism hearing of 4 July 2019

Which file, which date

The file in question is the "terrorism" leg of the process that began with the operation of 30 January 2018 and continued with the arrest of Alparslan Kuytul on 8 February 2018. The hearing of 4 July 2019 was held at the 11th High Criminal Court; the detention had entered its seventeenth month, and that day the case was adjourned for the fourth time and put off to 18 October 2019. The notes below are drawn from the defence made at that hearing.

The difference between the first accusation and the final indictment

Kuytul's first objection is the change the file itself has undergone. The process had begun before the Criminal Judgeship of Peace with an accusation of membership of four separate organisations; at that stage the names of the organisations were not even given. By the time the final indictment was reached, the picture was a different one. Even so, he explains that at every session a new talk is added to the file, and that for this reason it is not possible for the case to close.

He gives the concrete example himself: at the session three months before the hearing of 4 July he had responded to a talk that had entered the file, and afterwards a further talk, dating from fourteen months earlier, was added to the file. For a person with thousands of recorded talks there is no end to this method; every new recording means a new session, a new adjournment.

Being tried four times over the same talk

The most concrete legal example in the defence is his talk about the Suruç events. This talk had been examined twice by the prosecutor's office, and twice a decision of non-prosecution had been given. When it was taken to court a third time the case was heard and ended in acquittal. The same talk was raised a fourth time in 2019, this time in the file at the 11th High Criminal Court.

That a single talk which has received two decisions of non-prosecution and one acquittal is brought before the judiciary a fourth time is one of the clearest signs that the file produces not evidence but time. This is also Kuytul's own finding: the lengthening of the case keeps the suspicion about him alive in public opinion; were the case to end, it would emerge that he had not made terrorist propaganda.

The reason the case was brought: three items

Kuytul sums up the real ground of the accusation directed at him in three items:

1. that he argues that in God's world what God says should hold, that there should be a return to Islamic civilisation, and that he rejects Western civilisation,
2. that he criticises the government,
3. that he speaks of what the deep state has done.

He marks the third item as a turning point: he says that what befell him followed one after another once he had begun to speak of the deep state.

Page 18 of the indictment

The most striking part of the defence is that he claims as his own the sentence the indictment sets down as an accusation. On page 18 of the indictment it is stated that in the statements and publications of the foundation, which has representations in thirty-three provinces besides Adana, "their greatest aim is to establish an Islamic Civilisation". Kuytul does not try to correct this:

"Yes, I do state it, and I am honoured by it!"

The legal question here is plain: that an aim has been openly declared does not show that the aim is a crime. Secrecy is among the basic elements of an accusation of organised crime; a goal defended openly and in writing for years does not fall within that definition.

The demand for evidence and what the police did not send

Kuytul asks the court for one thing only: out of the six talks in the file, indeed out of his thousands of talks, a single sentence in which he presented what the PKK or FETÖ did as legitimate. If such a sentence is shown, he says, he will accept everything.

Bound up with this there is a second procedural objection. The court had asked the police for Kuytul's talks against these organisations. Stating that he has been criticising these structures for thirty years and that a large number of recordings to this effect exist, Kuytul says that, despite the instruction, not a single talk against them was sent to the court. That in a file only the material against a person is gathered while the material in their favour is left outside is the real problem the defence points to here.

This content is not an answer to a claim; it records the defence of the person spoken about, in their own words. The text rests on a summary prepared from notes taken at the hearing of 4 July 2019 and does not take the place of the court record.