The claim that Salafi and takfirist individuals attended his talks
Out of context
Claim
Fact
The matter is the investigation file of 2018, opened by the operation of 30 January 2018 and continued with the arrest of 8 February 2018. The letter of the Counter-Terrorism Department of the Police in that file was made public in September 2018 by the lawyer Adem Tural.
The claim has been manufactured out of the middle of a single sentence in that letter. The sentence has three parts; only the middle one was made into a report:
- The beginning: that Kuytul has statements to the effect that he does not adopt the Salafi and takfirist outlook and does not think it right to go to conflict zones.
- The middle: that, even so, information exists to the effect that some persons holding a Salafi/takfirist outlook have also taken an interest in the talks held within the foundation.
- The end: that no connection between the foundation in question and any terrorist organisation could be found.
Why this label, "Out of context"?
The part that is true is this: such information really does appear in the document. The lessons, the conferences and the talks are open to everyone; it is not possible to choose who walks into the hall.
But this is not a fault. The content of the lesson is built on precisely the rejection of those ideas, and the same document records this at the beginning of its own sentence. The view of someone listening to a lesson cannot be attributed to the person giving it — least of all when that lesson was given in order to refute that view.
What is the document, and where did it come from?
The letter in question is inside the investigation file opened by the operation of 30 January 2018. It was drawn up by the Counter-Terrorism Department of the Police, it relays the reply that came from the Intelligence Department, and it notes that the same matter was also passed on to the MİT Undersecretariat. The document was made public in September 2018 by Kuytul's lawyer Adem Tural.
The first finding the letter relays is about the foundation itself: the Furkan Education and Service Foundation, whose headquarters are in Adana, has been carrying out its activities lawfully since 1994 and has thirty-three branches across the country.
One sentence, three parts
The statement the claim rests on is not a sentence that stands on its own; it is the middle part of a long sentence in three parts. In order:
- that in his talks published in open sources Kuytul has statements to the effect that he does not adopt the Salafi and takfirist outlook and does not think it right to go to conflict zones;
- that, even so, on account of the group's discourse and manner of action, information exists to the effect that some persons holding a Salafi/takfirist outlook and in contact with conflict zones have also taken an interest in the talks held within the foundation;
- that no connection between the foundation in question and any terrorist organisation could be found.
The report took the middle part and left the first and the third. Yet the text notes the middle piece of information in spite of the first, and at the end it lays down a sentence of judgement — and that judgement is the opposite of what the reports allege.
"Information exists" and "it was established" are not the same thing
The document also carries a warning about itself concerning the nature of the information it relays: this information was obtained under Additional Article 7 of the PVSK, and it is stated expressly within the letter that it cannot be used as legal evidence unless it is separately evidenced.
That is, the text is not a record of findings saying "these people came, these things happened", but an intelligence note that has written on itself that it cannot count as evidence unless it is confirmed. In being turned into the language of news, that reservation fell away.
The letter is not a text written in his favour
This detail explains why the document has to be taken seriously. The same letter also records that in his talks published in open sources Kuytul made statements against secularism and democracy and that he frequently criticised the President, the government and state policies; it describes the group's discourse and manner of action as "radical".
That is, the text is not a document prepared in order to defend the person it was written about. Although it is written in a critical tone, the conclusion it reaches is that no connection with a terrorist organisation could be found. The weight of a concluding sentence is measured by whose mouth it comes out of.
In a lesson open to everyone the listeners are not chosen
What remains is the kernel of the claim that may be true: such people may have come to the talks. That is possible, and it is not surprising either — the lessons, the conferences and the talks have been open to everyone for years, and no one entering the hall is asked for identification.
The real question is what they found when they came. Kuytul himself relates that, because he listed those ideas and rejected them, those who held them stopped coming after a while; the detail of this stands in the answer he gave to the claim that he declared those who go into the army and police officers to be unbelievers. What he said to such a person is this: if they are coming to learn something, let them come, but let them not discuss those ideas with anyone there.
The profile of a lesson's audience is not the view of that lesson. If we accepted the opposite, a lesson of twenty-five hours given in order to set out the harms of takfirism would count as evidence of takfirism because of a few people who walked into its hall.
All the documents and dates on this page belong to the file opened in 2018.