Obstruction of Conferences and Pressure
The "he went knowing full well that trouble would break out" claim
Out of context
Claim
Fact
The incident took place in Adana on Saturday, 22 April 2017. The conference on the theme The Exemplary Human Being: The Prophet, to be held in the Aqua Park hall, had been banned the day before, on 21 April 2017, by a decision of the governor's office; thereupon it was sought to make a press statement in Atatürk Park.
What the claim turns upside down is the order of events. The intervention had begun before Kuytul arrived at the park. Pressurized water mixed with pepper gas was sprayed from the TOMAs at the few hundred people who had come early to listen to the statement, gas bombs were thrown, plastic bullets were used, dogs were set on them, they were struck with batons. That day there were people whose noses, arms, feet and shoulder blades were broken and whose eyes were injured.
Kuytul went there after this news reached him:
"I went in order to exercise my right. I am not obliged to obtain permission."
Not a single stone was thrown at the police by the crowd that day.
Why is this labelled "Out of context"?
The part that is true is this: Kuytul went there knowing that an intervention was under way. We do not deny it; he himself recounts it in the same way.
But this is not a fault. First, his going did not start the incident; by the time he set out, the intervention had already been carried out. Once the order is reversed, cause and effect change places as well. Second, going somewhere in order to exercise a legal right cannot be counted as the justification for the force applied there. If it is, the right itself disappears: you would be expected not to go anywhere you expect to be obstructed.
For this reason the real question is not why he went, but why the few hundred people who came to the park early were treated in this way.
First, the calendar: 22 April 2017, Adana
The Furkan Foundation was preparing a conference in Adana entitled The Exemplary Human Being: The Prophet. The municipality's Mimar Sinan Open-Air Theatre was requested first and was not granted; the Aqua Park hall was then rented. On Friday, 21 April 2017, it was communicated through the police that the conference had been banned.
Thereupon it was decided that a press statement would be made the following day, Saturday, 22 April 2017, in Atatürk Park. The location had not been chosen by chance: there were some ten spots at which the Adana Governor's Office had banned press statements, and Atatürk Park was not among them.
Against whom, and when, was the intervention carried out?
This is the point the claim skips. The first group of those who came to listen to the statement reached the park early; they numbered between three hundred and five hundred, and Kuytul was not yet there. The intervention was carried out against this crowd: pressurized water mixed with pepper gas from the TOMAs, gas bombs, plastic bullets, dogs and batons. There were people whose noses, arms, feet and shoulder blades were broken and whose eyes were injured; one woman's headscarf was pulled off.
Kuytul became involved in the event after receiving this news. That is, the sentence trouble broke out when he went is built upon trouble that had already broken out.
The legal position of going
There was no obligation to obtain permission for a press statement. Article 34 of the Constitution says that everyone may hold unarmed and non-aggressive meetings and demonstration marches without prior permission; Article 3 of Law No. 2911 on Meetings and Demonstration Marches repeats the same provision.
Under Article 17 of the same law, a governor or district governor may postpone a particular assembly by at most one month; in order to be able to ban it, a clear and imminent danger that an offence will be committed must exist. What such a danger might be at a press statement was demonstrated neither that day nor afterwards.
At the scene Kuytul reminded the police chief that the statement was not about the conference but about Cem Küçük's words concerning those who took part in the Mavi Marmara, and that there was no requirement to obtain permission for a press statement in Adana. The chief could not say otherwise; without even seeing the need to ask the governor, he gave the order to intervene.
The direction of the question
The question why did you go conceals a question that is not being asked. Kuytul's answer points to this: without the police being asked why plastic bullets were used, why dogs were set loose, why a hand was laid on a headscarf, the question is being put to the one who went. In his own words:
"I am not one of those cowards and turncoats who would leave their friends alone while such an injustice is being done."
How did the march come about?
Those who had been dispersed gathered again when they heard that Kuytul had arrived. As the crowd grew, the event turned of its own accord into a march, slogans were chanted, traffic was blocked. His own assessment points in the same direction:
"Yet if they had permitted the press statement in Atatürk Park, nothing at all would have happened."
That is, what produced the scene spilling onto the avenue that day was not the making of the statement, but its being prevented.
The one measure that remains
Despite all this intervention, not a single blow fell on the police from thousands of people, not a single stone was thrown. Whether a crowd is dangerous becomes clear at the moment it is most provoked; that moment came, and the result is there for all to see.
Related topics: what the ban decision covered and the "the programmes carry a security risk" claim.