March 2019: The letter Alparslan Kuytul wrote to the public from prison
In the name of God, the Most Merciful, the Most Compassionate
Praise be to God, who educates His servants through His Book, through His Prophet and through afflictions, who makes them firm, who raises up those who are to be raised and brings low those who are to be brought low; blessings and peace be upon the Messenger of God, may God bless him and grant him peace, who struggled night and day for humanity's deliverance from idolatry and from the evil of oppressive and false orders, who taught people civilisation and justice, and who built the finest civilisation in history out of nothing; and peace be upon all my brothers and sisters who strive to revive and rebuild the civilisation we have lost, who defend tawhid, justice, freedom and civilisation.
My esteemed brothers and sisters! Though I have been in prison for 13 months, this is the second letter I have written to my brothers in this cause and the first I have written to the public. Because we were expecting release at any moment, I was not very eager to write letters. I thank the managers of Millî Gazete for being the occasion of my writing this one.
First of all I should say this: when we consider the state of the Muslim world, we have no strength left to think about our own troubles. The Muslims are scattered, the Muslims are in a wretched state, the Muslims are under the oppression of dictatorial orders and of the imperialist powers that support them. After the First World War the great states that broke up the Muslim world set up dictatorships and kingdoms throughout the Middle East. In these dictatorships they left neither justice nor freedom of expression. The result was material backwardness and civil war.
In Turkey, as you know, a great deal changed once the AKP government fell out with the Fethullah Gülen community and war began between them with the operations of 17–25 December 2013, and especially after 15 July. Foremost among the things that changed: the narrowing of the field of activity of Islamic communities, the obstruction of many activities such as conferences, the attempt to spread hostility towards religious communities, the closure of student houses and madrasas belonging to many communities, the closure of some foundations and associations, the appointment of trustees to municipalities, companies and media organisations, the destruction to a considerable degree of freedom of thought and expression, detentions of a great many opposition voices on the claim of making propaganda for FETÖ or the PKK, cases being opened and many of them being arrested, the opposition being silenced in this way, many of them being brought before a court only after a year or a year and a half, the prisons overflowing, proceedings being taken against half a million people, and a great fear being created in society, and so on. In two or three years Turkey changed enormously. The deep powers hostile to Islam and to religious communities are living the finest and happiest years of their lives — they are celebrating. It is plain to see how much harm the coup attempt of 15 July did to Islamic work, to the country and to the nation, and who profited from it. Those who wish to understand who stands behind an act should look at whom that act benefits. Only when it is looked at in this way can what lies behind 15 July be seen, and only then can all the coup-makers be identified. But this is not being done; the deep powers that encouraged the coup-makers to the coup and led them into a trap are not being pursued, and instead every religious community is being presented as a potential coup-maker, their activities are being restricted, and under the pretext of 15 July something heavier than 28 February is being inflicted.
In truth, in this way both the roots of the communities are being torn up and the AKP government is being made to saw off the branch it sits on and led towards collapse. The deep powers hostile to Islam are taking revenge on the Islamists, giving the Islamists a "balance adjustment", strengthening the regime still further, putting to shame those who said "28 February was supposed to last a thousand years — look how we finished it", and showing how thoroughly they have mastered social engineering.
While on one side the deep state tries to reach its own goals, on the other the AKP government calls everyone who criticises it either a FETÖ member or a PKK member, and where it cannot say that, accuses them of making propaganda for these organisations and sends thousands of opponents to the dungeons. In the eyes of the AKP government everyone who criticises it is either a member of a terrorist organisation or someone making propaganda for one, and a traitor. This outlook and this idiom show that balance and psychology have now thoroughly broken down. If this attitude does not arise from a loss of balance, then it is being applied as a deliberate strategy of threat to frighten those who criticise the government. Both possibilities are as dangerous as each other, and both are a sign that this business will end very badly.
Although we have not the slightest relationship with any terrorist organisation, and although within the 20,000-page file the prosecution submitted to the court there are reports from the General Directorate of Security and from the police of Adana, Mersin and Sakarya stating that "Alparslan Kuytul and the Furkan Foundation have no connection with any terrorist organisation", they carried out an operation against us with dawn raids of the kind made against terrorist organisations, and then arrested us. As if that were not enough, they held me in solitary confinement for 312 days and inflicted psychological torture. Long-term solitary confinement in a dungeon is meant either to drive a person mad, or to cow him into submission, or to make him rot. Without God's mercy it is all but inevitable that one of these should befall him. The Lord who cooled the fire for Abraham, peace be upon him, cooled the fire of the dungeon for me too. I do not know how not the days but the weeks, even the months, are passing. Indeed I do not want the days to pass; I try to make more of them. Thanks be to God. Master Bediüzzaman says: "He who knows God and obeys Him is fortunate even in a dungeon. He who forgets Him is in a dungeon even in a palace, and is wretched."
If I am to speak briefly of the real reason for what has been done to us, in my view all of it has three causes:
1- That we cry out the belief in tawhid and say "In God's world what God says must prevail", and that we defend Islamic civilisation,
2- That we criticise the AKP government on certain matters,
3- That we speak of the deep state and of what it does.
The AKP government was disturbed chiefly by our criticism of it, the deep powers by all three causes, and they gave the order for the operation. Yet it was thanks to the belief in tawhid that disturbs them that we had become a world state. The belief in tawhid that yesterday strengthened us, brought about a society at peace and built an exemplary civilisation can do the same today. The belief in tawhid means recognising no god — that is, no authority to be obeyed — other than God, refusing to be the servant of servants, and taking one's values and laws from God. When we take our way of life, our laws and our human and moral values from God, a strong and peaceful society and state will come about. For there is no error in God's law and order.
Tawhid is true. For whoever owns a thing, the right to rule over it belongs to him. Since the world and all within it and all human beings belong to God, then people must obey God, and in God's world an order must be established as God says. This is God's right. Are those who seize another's property by force of arms, or who carry out a coup against a legitimate government and try to take the powers of the elected by force of arms, not usurpers? If those who seize by violence the authority of the elected to rule are coup-makers, are those who seize God's authority to rule not coup-makers? Those who say "not what God says but what we say shall prevail" are usurpers of God's right and coup-makers.
Those who set up their own reign were disturbed by our words "In God's world what God says must prevail", and they feared that tawhid, which has brought down many a reign in history, would bring down theirs too. For this reason, like those in whose footsteps they walk, they took the path of silencing those who explain the cause of tawhid. Yet even if they silence me, my writings and my videos will not fall silent; if they silence my videos, my students will not fall silent; the other Muslims who explain tawhid will not fall silent; and if they silence them too, tawhid will not fall silent. Tawhid is the most powerful word in the world. It accords both with reason and with conscience. It need only be explained plainly and courageously.
As the sun melts statues of snow, so the sun of tawhid melts all ideologies and orders. The Muslims need only bring tawhid onto the agenda. There is no statue of ice that the sun of tawhid cannot melt. The cause of tawhid is like an ocean; no dam can be raised before it. Those who cry out tawhid and do not stay silent in the face of injustice become the first community to reach God's mercy. Like the snowdrop.
Tawhid is true because the one who knows a thing best is the one who made it. Therefore the one who knows the human being best is God, who created him. Moreover God, mighty and majestic, shows every day and everywhere the infinity of His knowledge and His power through the perfect and infinite beings He has created and through the perfect order He has established. God, may His majesty be exalted, asks people: "Do you know better, or does God?" The answer to the question is plain. What is meant is: "Since the one who knows best is God, then obey not people but God alone, live only according to the order of life He has sent down; otherwise you will not be free of your problems."
There are other proofs too for my saying that in God's world what God says must prevail. So as not to make this long I shall not go into them. I should like to dwell a little on justice as well. As is known, the Noble Qur'an says, "God commands justice." Just as the heavens and the earth stand by justice, by the laws and measures God has placed in nature, so states too stand by justice. In a country the most trusted institution should be the institution of justice. If trust in the institution of justice has fallen to 10 or 20 per cent, then there is no justice left there.
If in a country judges are caught between the laws and their instructions, or between their conscience and their instructions, justice will not be secured in that country.
If in a country the institution of justice has become the means of silencing the opposition, if it has turned into the government's stick, then there will be fewer people who think and speak, and thought will slowly die. And a society that does not read, does not think and is not allowed to speak is condemned to decline. You cannot point to a developed country in which there is no freedom of expression. Dictatorship and backwardness are like two companions who cannot be parted. As in the Middle East.
To want everyone to think the same on every matter is to want people to be animals. For animals have no differing thoughts.
Those who impose their own thought on a human being to whom God has granted the right to think differently are considering themselves more authoritative than God.
Not to oppress while one is powerless does not show that a person is just. The just person is the one who does not oppress while he is powerful.
Rulers will be saved at the Great Court not by their prayers but by their justice.
Those who move away from justice have moved away from the Qur'an. For the Qur'an is justice.
Those who sacrifice justice for the higher interests of the state will soon see that with injustice they have in fact sacrificed the state. Moreover the interests obtained through injustice are illegitimate interests, because they were obtained by illegitimate means.
Those who wish to silence those who cry out the truth are cowards who fear the truth. If rulers are just, they are not obliged to silence people of thought. Only just rulers do not fear freedom of expression. Only just rulers can be protected from becoming dictators. Rulers who do not secure justice turn into dictators in order to silence those who speak. What is true has in itself the power to spread. Because dictators know this, they silence those who speak the truth. To keep their reign going they are willing to put an end to freedom of expression, to let thought die and to fall behind.
Besides these there are also those who stay silent in the face of these injustices; by not speaking the truth and not standing beside the oppressed, they fail to protect the honour and dignity of Islam and turn people away from the true religion. The days to come will belong not to those who kept silent before oppression but to those who cried out the truth. The more the oppressed keep silent, the more insolent the oppressors become.
For those who shut their eyes and stop their ears to oppression, the punishment will be of the same kind as the deed, and in days to come they too will not be seen and will not be heard.
Those who do not defend their freedoms at a time when rights are so restricted pay the price by becoming slaves. Unless people of character who cry out the truth and reject falsehood grow in number, the darkness will not turn to light and our deliverance will not be possible.
Dzhokhar Dudayev said: "To stand against unjust power and beside powerless right is my faith."
Alija Izetbegović, reproaching the silent, said: "What we shall remember is not the words of our enemies but the silence of our friends."
This point should not be forgotten: to those who stand up for the oppressed, God stands up when they themselves are oppressed.
And those who keep silent in the face of injustice, God subjects to injustice. For they will not understand their error any other way.
Courage is not speaking the truth in a setting where truth prevails, but speaking the truth in a setting where falsehood prevails.
The African writer Desmond Tutu says: If you are neutral in the face of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.
So then: be the man of the truth, not the man of power! For the powerful fall, but the truth does not.
The punishment for keeping silent before oppression is to suffer yet more oppression.
Those who think that if they speak in the face of oppression they will be finished are in fact finished by keeping silent.
In a country where there is justice, people are innocent until their guilt is proved; in a country where there is no justice, people are guilty until they prove their innocence.
In a country where there is justice, prosecutors prove the offence; in a country where there is no justice, the accused prove their innocence.
In a country where there is justice, first there is evidence of an offence, then the person is given the right to defend himself, and then, if he is guilty, he is arrested. In a country where there is no justice, the person is first arrested, then an offence is invented, and then he is given the right to defend himself. But this right of defence is sometimes given after 6 months, sometimes after a year, sometimes after 2 years.
As was done to us: they arrested us although there was no offence and no evidence requiring arrest, six months later they prepared an indictment resting on slander, contradiction and supposition, and a year later they gave us the right to defend ourselves. The indictment was divided into two files, and because both of them were empty we were released at the first hearing of both courts. Certain politicians and certain deep powers could not bear the release decision and brought into play a strange system left over from the state of emergency. The prosecutor objected to the release decision, and another court which knew nothing whatever of the file accepted the objection and arrested us again — and that was that. Since it is not possible to examine a 20,000-page file, a 120-page indictment and thousands of pages of statement records in one or two hours, and to reach a decision without hearing the accused, it should not be hard to understand how that decision was made.
A decision of the 4th Assize Court, which examined the file for five or six months and took statements for three days from morning to evening and reached its release decision after understanding the matter, can be overturned in an hour by another court that knows nothing of the case. The system has been set up this way on purpose. It seems that if, despite all the pressure, a court does not decide as the powerful wish, this is the way to have that decision overturned. Thanks to these events we came to know the system that has been set up and those who set it up. But it seems that those who do this still do not know, or have forgotten, the truth that "unbelief may endure, but oppression does not."
In fact the signal that something abnormal was about to happen was given from the very first moment after our release. From the moment we left Bolu F-Type Prison until we reached Adana, the physical surveillance was not let up for an instant. At the entrance to Adana they tried to stop me from even greeting the hundreds of people waiting for me at a service area on the motorway, and made the threat that they would "intervene". I said: "I cannot just drive off without greeting the hundreds of brothers who have waited hours for me in this cold; I have just come out of prison, and if need be I will go back in." Then they allowed me to make a short speech to the friends gathered at the service area. But just as I began to speak, they came right up close and prevented my speaking by repeating the same announcement over and over on a megaphone.
After making a short speech in such conditions, as we got into the vehicles and set off, they would not let the friends leave the service area and come with us. To stop me from calling in on the friends waiting for me elsewhere (at the Adana fairground), they blocked with their vehicles every road leading to the fairground. When I reached home in this fashion, I saw that they had surrounded the house with hundreds of police, special operations officers, water cannon and armoured vehicles. When I went out onto the balcony of our first-floor flat to thank the hundreds of friends who had managed, despite all the obstruction, to reach the front of the house, they prevented my speaking once more, the moment I began, with the sirens of the water cannon.
This obstruction reminded me of what the people of Mecca did to our Prophet. They too beat stones together to prevent the Prophet, may God bless him and grant him peace, from speaking and to drown out his voice. By various methods they tried to stop his speech from being heard. Were these methods able to stop the truth from being heard? Those who act in this way only disgrace themselves.
This event proved the truth of what I said before my release: "My files are not a file of crime, they are a file of silence." God, mighty and majestic, showed millions my innocence through the releases, and through this event showed that an attempt was being made to silence me. In the speech I made after my release to the hundreds of friends who were waiting at the entrance to the city because they had not been allowed into Bolu, I said, "They imprisoned me to silence me, but I will not be silent" — and the next day they arrested me again. In this way they showed everyone once more what they had arrested me for and what it was they feared. It does not matter: "If the courts are the sultan's, the hearts are ours."
To those who are at odds with us I say:
O my slandering, base enemies! Know that your dealing with us makes no sense. For if God, may His majesty be exalted, supports us, you have not the power to stop us. And if God, may His majesty be exalted, does not support us, then there is no need for you to try to stop us. For what God does not support does not reach its goal. Either way, you are tiring yourselves for nothing.
Whatever oppression they may practise, whatever slander they may throw, we will go on explaining the diamond truths of the Qur'an and the cause of tawhid until we die. We have never been involved in terror, and God willing we never will be. We have not bowed to the enemies of Islam, and we will not. We have not obeyed them, and we will not.
The Noble Qur'an says: "Be patient; your patience is only through God. Do not grieve over them, and do not be distressed by the plot they are devising." And our Master, may God bless him and grant him peace, says: "God increases the honour of one who bears with patience the injustice done to him." Even if they seek to provoke, we will be patient — but while we are patient we will also go on with the struggle.
Thoughts or beliefs come alive, bring the masses alive and turn into a cause only if suffering is borne and a price is paid for them. Ideas spread the more they are oppressed. Causes grow in proportion to the suffering borne for them.
Rumi says: "Wherever there is someone striving to set the unruly on the right path, he will take many a kick." So then, we shall consent to this.
They say to me, "Be silent, do not explain tawhid, and keep quiet about the oppression they practise." And I answer them with the words of Joseph, peace be upon him: "My Lord, the prison is dearer to me than that to which they call me." Bearing the ordeal of the dungeon for speaking the truth is better than bearing the humiliation of keeping silent before injustice.
Once God is behind us, it does not matter who stands against us.
The burden we carry is gold, it is diamond. He who gave this burden will also give the strength to carry it.
Neither the concrete walls and iron bars of the prison nor the lies and slanders of the media can stop the truth from reaching the masses.
O oppressors who sent me to the dungeon with slanders! While I go to the dungeon in the way of God, you will go to your homes. You will tear me from my family and my friends, and you will be reunited with your own families and friends. While I shiver in a cold dungeon, you will live at ease in your warm homes. While I am alone in solitary confinement, you will converse with your friends. So be it. Let me answer you first with Yunus:
"So be it! The Creator is our friend
Do not think what the oppressor does is gain
The sigh of the oppressed brings the shah down
Everything has its appointed time"
O oppressors! While I live in the dungeon the honour of the wronged, you outside will live the humiliation of the wrongdoer. The sweetness I take in the dungeon from being wronged, you will never take from wrongdoing. While I live the happiness of being with my Lord, you will multiply your sins with your false friends. I can bear the dungeon of this world, but you will not be able to bear the dungeon of the hereafter. So my condition is better than yours. Though on the one hand I suffer, on the other I am in a station of thankfulness, for I am among those who have been an occasion for tawhid coming onto the agenda in this country and for some people understanding it, and because I leave behind me a vanguard generation in good works.
Until I die I will go on saying: "Tawhid, Justice, Freedom, Civilisation."
Peace be upon all the oppressed and upon all who support the oppressed. May you be entrusted to God.