The claim that "he showed tolerance towards those who insulted the Kaaba"
Unfounded
Claim
Fact
This claim rests on a calendar error. Alparslan Kuytul's statement about the Boğaziçi University protests was made on the "Gündeme İslami Bakış" programme of 9 January 2021. The incident the claim is built on, in which an image of the Kaaba was used, came to light in the days after that statement.
Once the order is that way round, the claim falls of its own accord: it is not possible to show tolerance towards an incident that has not yet taken place. On 9 January 2021 there was no such incident; therefore not one sentence spoken that day can have been framed about it.
The subject of the talk was a different one too. On that programme Kuytul spoke about an appointment being made to the administration of a university, about trustees being installed in posts that ought to be determined by election, and about the direction in which the country's administrative structure is moving. Disrespect towards sacred values does not appear in any way on the agenda of that talk.
The claim was built by laying two separate things that happened at two separate times one on top of the other: a political assessment from the start of January and an incident that came to light days later were merged as though they were a single sentence. The written statement of the Furkan volunteers dated 6 February 2021 put this point on record separately as well, stating on the same grounds that the claim was "wholly a distortion".
Other claims derived from the same statement: "LGBT supporter" · "he took his place alongside the Boğaziçi protesters"
The calendar
This claim is one of the rare ones that is settled by the calendar alone. The order is as follows:
| Date | What happened |
|---|---|
| Early January 2021 | Student protests begin after a rector is appointed to Boğaziçi University by the President. |
| 9 January 2021 | On the "Gündeme İslami Bakış" programme, in response to a question put to him, Kuytul assesses the appointment and the protests. This is the talk used as the basis of the claim. |
| The days that follow | The incident in which a group of protesters used an image of the Kaaba comes to light during the protests. |
| 5 February 2021 | The newspaper Yeni Akit runs a report on the talk of 9 January. |
| 6 February 2021 | The Furkan volunteers publish their written statement; Kuytul replies the same evening on the programme. |
In other words, the words the claim is about were spoken before the incident the claim is about.
How was the claim built?
When the talk was brought back onto the agenda roughly a month later, the events that had occurred in between settled on top of it. A reader reading the report on 5 February 2021 reads it knowing everything that had happened up to that day; what the report does not say is on which day and in what state of knowledge the talk was given. And so a sentence spoken on 9 January comes to look like a defence of something that happened afterwards.
This is the quietest form of distortion: there is no need to invent a false sentence, it is enough to place a true sentence on the wrong date.
For the method to work, it is enough that the reader does not know one single thing: the date of the talk. The moment the date is given, the claim becomes unreadable — which is why every piece of content on this site states separately on which day the talk was given, on which day the report appeared and what date the document bears.
Document
What was the subject of the talk?
Even if the chronology is set aside, the claim cannot stand, because the subject of the talk of 9 January 2021 was not sacred values. What was spoken about was this: an appointment being made to a post that ought to be determined by election, similar practices having been seen earlier at foundations and municipalities, the chain put on the gate of the university and the increase in police harshness. None of these contains a sentence passing judgement on disrespect towards a symbol.
Kuytul's position on disrespect towards sacred values is not something one need wonder about either; it is on record in his lessons and talks spread over years. Instead of looking at those records, the claim prefers to cite a single programme whose subject is something else entirely.
Why "Unfounded"?
Because there is no verifiable side to the claim at all. There is not a single sentence framed by Kuytul about that incident — neither favourable nor unfavourable. The claim is built on the existence of a sentence that does not exist; and the talk it is fastened to was given days before the incident.
Refuting a claim usually requires listening to hours of recordings and comparing what came before and after a talk. Here even that is unnecessary: looking at two dates placed side by side is enough.
Other claims derived from the same statement: "LGBT supporter" · "he took his place alongside the Boğaziçi protesters"