How Did the "An Economic Crisis Is Coming" Remark Enter the Indictment?
Fact
The file being discussed is this one: the 30 January 2018 Furkan Foundation operation, the 8 February 2018 arrest, the 5 December 2019 release. The explanation below comes from the interview given on 10 December 2019, after his release.
What entered the indictment is not an act but a sentence. In one of his talks Kuytul had said that God would send this society an economic crisis and that the dollar would soar. That talk was placed in the file, and the following question was written beside it: "How did he know this?"
There is no claim of prophecy in Kuytul's answer:
"I say this because I know the ways of God."
The context of the sentence is plain as well. What he said in that same talk was not an economic forecast but a judgement about consequences: on matters such as the support given to the invasion of Iraq through İncirlik even though the authorisation motion had not passed Parliament, the Syria policy and the downed Russian plane, society kept silent; an injustice that is passed over in silence has its price. In his own words: "This nation will not understand until it is touched in the pocket."
So what is at hand is not a crisis forecast with a date attached, but a warning that says "if it goes on like this, this is how it ends". That a sentence from a sermon was placed in a criminal file as evidence tells us more about the file itself than about the sentence.
The date of the talk itself is not stated in the source; what is certain is that it appeared in the indictment of the file opened by the 30 January 2018 operation.
Which file, which dates?
Everything on this page belongs to a single period: the 30 January 2018 Furkan Foundation operation, the 8 February 2018 arrest, the 5 December 2019 release. The account comes from the interview dated 10 December 2019 given after his release and from the television programme broadcast on 11 December 2019.
The date of the talk itself does not appear in the source; for that reason no date has been invented here either. What is certain is this: the talk was placed in the indictment of this file as evidence.
The sentence that entered the indictment
In one of his talks, while explaining that the injustices this society has kept silent about would not go unanswered, Kuytul had said that God would send an economic crisis and that the dollar would soar. Those who prepared the file placed that talk in the indictment and wrote a question beside it: "How did he know this?"
The question itself is striking. For a remark to count as evidence of a crime it would normally have to contain an element of crime; here what is counted as evidence is that the remark turned out to be right.
Kuytul's answer: not prophecy, but a measure
"I say this because I know the ways of God."
What he means is not knowledge of the unseen but drawing a conclusion from the unchanging laws God has laid down for societies: a society that stays silent in the face of oppression pays the price for it sooner or later. This is not a forecast that gives a date, it is a statement of a rule.
On the television programme he took part in during those same days he explains the measure more plainly:
"When you remain bound to Islamic jurisprudence, you come to have a correct outlook."
What jurisprudence says is, in his view, short and clear: what is lawful and what is forbidden. He ties the rest to it like this: "When you speak according to that, you are in fact getting it right."
So as the source of being right he points not to intuition but to a measure. He also describes its opposite: speaking according to the conjuncture, or according to whichever way the wind blows.
What was that sentence the outcome of?
The crisis warning is not a sentence uttered on its own; it is the outcome of a long list. In the same talk Kuytul counts the following:
- 2003: support given to the invasion of Iraq through the İncirlik Base even though the authorisation motion had not passed Parliament.
- The policy pursued in Syria.
- The downed Russian plane.
In his view what these matters have in common is the silence of society and of the religious segment in particular. The crisis sentence, too, was said to that silence: "This nation will not understand until it is touched in the pocket."
The Russian plane example
Kuytul tells this example separately, because he paid its price himself. He says that when he found the downing of the plane wrong and criticised it he met with a harsh reaction, and that afterwards a step back was taken on that very same matter. He recalls that the same circles applauded first the hard stance and then the apology.
His objection here is not to persons but to the lack of measure: how can two opposite states of the same event both be applauded?
The objection is not new
On the television programme he also says that this stance did not begin in 2018: the first criticism he directed at the government was the İncirlik matter in 2003. In his own words, the reason his voice was not heard in that period is simple — the internet was not yet widespread.
What this page says and what it does not
What is conveyed here is not whether a crisis forecast turned out to be correct. What is told is how a sentence from a sermon entered a criminal file, and how the person who spoke it explained this.
The page deals only with the 2018–2019 file. Today there is a separate and ongoing judicial process; none of the information here relates to that process. We have separately covered the three reasons he listed for his arrest in the same file: Why was I arrested? The three answers he gave himself.