"If They Arrest Me Again, I Am at Home"
Fact
The period in question is this: on 30 January 2018 an operation was carried out against the Furkan Foundation, Alparslan Kuytul was arrested on 8 February 2018 and released on 5 December 2019. The answers below were given within the first ten days after his release, on 10, 11 and 15 December 2019, on three separate programmes.
In all three the same thing was asked: are you not afraid of being arrested again?
In the newspaper interview of 10 December 2019 his answer was a single sentence: "When a person fears God alone, he comes to fear nothing at all."
On the television programme he took part in the following day, he met the same question with a comparison:
"You do not sacrifice a diamond to save a lump of coal. I see myself as the coal; I see the truth, the reality, as the diamond. I cannot sacrifice the truth and the reality in order to save myself."
On the same broadcast he also gave his address: "If they want to do it again, I am at home. Let them come and take me."
On the third programme four days later he tied the reason to the appointed hour: "There is only one appointed hour; if I am a coward I will die at that same time, and if I am brave I will die at that same time."
The point where the three answers meet is this: twenty-two months in detention produced no softening in what he says. He gives the reason on the same broadcast: "To think of myself and not speak the truth is not something I am able to do."
Content from the same period: the 14 months spent in solitary confinement, the three points he lists as the reason for his arrest and the measure of injustice.
Three programmes, six days, one question
Alparslan Kuytul was released on 5 December 2019, after 22 months of pre-trial detention. In the three programmes he took part in over the following ten days, he was asked the same thing each time: did he know that he could be taken back inside if he went on speaking this openly, was he not afraid?
| Date | Programme | The gist of the answer |
|---|---|---|
| 10 December 2019 | Gazete Duvar interview | "When one fears God alone, one becomes someone who fears nothing" |
| 11 December 2019 | TV5 live broadcast | "A diamond is not sacrificed to save coal" |
| 15 December 2019 | KHK TV interview | "The appointed hour is but one" |
10 December 2019 — the newspaper interview
The first answer is the shortest one, and it is no more than a definition:
"When a person fears God alone, he becomes someone who fears nothing. Once God is behind us, it does not matter who stands before us."
11 December 2019 — coal and diamond
In the television programme the next day he answered the same question with an analogy that sets out what he is protecting and at what cost:
"A diamond is not sacrificed to save coal. I see myself as the coal; and I see the truth, the reality, as the diamond. In order to save myself, I cannot sacrifice the truth, the reality."
The place of the analogy has to be seen: he is saying that what is valuable is not his own safety but the word he speaks. In the same broadcast he tied this to a more concrete sentence — "If they want to do it again, I am at home. Let them come and take me; but they will only be disgraced further."
As the grounds for this second half he pointed to the state of the case files. By his own assessment, as of December 2019 the indictments were empty, and of the two separate files he had been released at the first hearing in both. That is, the sentence "let them come and take me" is not a challenge but a claim that there is nothing to hold him on.
15 December 2019 — "the appointed hour is but one"
In the third programme four days later he tied the answer to destiny:
"If I am arrested again, so be it, gladly. I came into this world once. I am someone who believes that I must put forward whatever I have. The appointed hour is but one; if I am a coward I will die at the same moment, and if I am brave I will die at the same moment."
He had framed the same thought in the TV5 broadcast as well: "Whether you are brave or a coward, in the end you will live what God has decreed." There are four days between the two programmes, and the reasoning does not change.
The limit of the answer
That this stance is not a state of "not caring about anyone" he also says in the same broadcast. The limit he himself draws is this: "I bear enmity towards no one; but I am also obliged to defend the oppressed. I am also obliged to touch upon injustices."
That is, the reason he accepts the risk of being arrested again is not obstinacy but the description of a duty. He explains this through the cost of keeping silent as well: he says that the circles which do not support him are of the mind that "if we speak, they will finish us off too", and his response to this is a single sentence — "you will waste away keeping silent."
Why does this page exist?
A harsh sentence spoken in a single recording can be brushed aside with "he just happened to speak that way at that moment". That the answers given to the same question in three separate programmes within six days all arrive at the same place cannot be brushed aside. What this page does is not to add a commentary, but to place the three answers side by side together with their dates.
Everything here belongs to the 2018–2019 detention and to the period immediately after it. Today there is a separate and ongoing judicial process; not one sentence on this page concerns that process.