Obstruction of Conferences and Pressure
The claim that "they are being obstructed because they are enemies of the government"
Unfounded
Claim
Fact
The text this answer rests on is the foundation statement published on 6 November 2018, after the dawn raid of 30 January 2018. The period of obstruction described runs between 2014 and 2018.
The claim says this: if this structure's conferences are being obstructed, the reason is obvious, they are enemies of the government. Let us look at it by the claim's own criterion — someone who is an enemy of a government in power opposes that government's right decisions as well.
The record shows the opposite. Two acts of that same government were openly supported by Alparslan Kuytul:
"They launched the resolution process; I appreciated it, I gave it my support. This bloodshed must stop. This government's greatest project is the resolution process; I supported it. Their greatest service is that they settled the headscarf question; I congratulated them, I appreciated it."
His criticisms, on the other hand, are few in number and subject-based: Turkey's support for the United States during the Iraq War, the encouragement of the people in Syria to take to the streets, and the recommendation of secularism in Egypt. All three are objections to a particular foreign policy decision; not to the existence of a government.
His own description confirms this too: "We are not people who oppose everything the way an opposition party does. There are things we criticize, and there are things we appreciate."
An attitude that both criticizes and appreciates is, by definition, not wholesale opposition. Finding particular acts wrong is not the same thing as being an enemy of a government — and when it is put forward as the justification for the obstructions, the claim is left without foundation.
What does the claim accomplish?
The cancellation of a conference or the closing of a hall calls for an explanation. The sentence "these people are enemies of the government" is short and convenient enough to take the place of that explanation: the obstruction becomes legitimate and no reason is asked for. This is why testing the truth of the claim is the same thing as testing the justification for the obstructions.
The criterion: how is hostility recognized?
Hostility puts everything the other side does in the same scale; its right is rejected along with its wrong. The question is therefore clear — in those same years, from that same lectern, was a favorable sentence ever uttered about a decision of that same government?
Two decisions that were openly supported
It was. The two acts Kuytul dwelt on most in that period are the government's own acts:
"They launched the resolution process; I appreciated it, I gave it my support. This bloodshed must stop. This government's greatest project is the resolution process; I supported it. Their greatest service is that they settled the headscarf question; I congratulated them, I appreciated it."
These two headings are not small details picked at random; they are the most contested and most visible decisions of the period. The person said to be an enemy of the government is on the supporting side in both.
What are the criticisms about?
The criticisms are not hidden either. But they are few in number and each of them is tied to a specific subject:
- Turkey's support for the United States against Iraq during the Iraq War,
- the encouragement of the people in Syria to take to the streets,
- the recommendation of secularism in Egypt.
What all three have in common is that they are foreign policy decisions. Not one of them is directed at an electoral calculation, a party or a person. To find a decision wrong, one does not have to be in enmity with whoever took it.
"We are not an opposition party"
The answer he gave when this claim was put to him describes the difference directly:
"We are not an opposition party. We set out our view in the name of Islam. Whichever government it may be, speaking the truths is our duty as Muslims."
An opposition party is obliged to object to every step the other side takes; that is its job. The attitude described here is a different one: decisions are taken up one by one, some are supported and some are found wrong. The measure is not who the government is, but the decision itself.
So what is given as the reason?
Kuytul puts the reason for the obstructions in his own sentence as follows: "They are doing all of this because I explain Tawhid and because I criticize." This is his own assessment, and the page conveys it not as a document but as the statement of the person concerned. What refutes the claim, however, is not the assessment but the record: the support and the criticism alike belong to the same years, the same government and the same lectern.
The sequence itself also strains the claim. While the obstructions entered the record on 13 December 2014, the supported decisions fall within that same period as well — that is, the simple order set up as "first they became enemies, then they were obstructed" does not hold. For a breakdown of the dates: the 2014-2018 timeline.
The broader version of the same claim, independent of the obstructions, is handled under a separate heading on the site: the claim that "he is hostile to the AK Party government". There the same criterion is applied through the Gezi events, the 17-25 December operation and the example of the Ensar Foundation.