The claim that he made propaganda for a terrorist organisation

The single accusation that was left

In the file opened after the operation of 30 January 2018 the first charge was membership of four terrorist organisations at once. In the indictment prepared in July 2018 all of the membership charges were withdrawn, and propaganda for a terrorist organisation was left standing alone in the file. The file was heard at the Adana 11th High Criminal Court.

The sequence itself produces an oddity. In Kuytul's words:

"Knowing full well that we have nothing to do with terrorism, they charged us with being a member of a terrorist organisation and with making propaganda for a terrorist organisation. When that did not hold, the prosecutor this time cancelled the charge of membership of a terrorist organisation while preparing the actual indictment."

Not one sentence could be shown

A charge of propaganda requires a statement that can be produced. At the hearing of 4 July 2019 Kuytul asked for that statement to be shown, and said that in return he would accept everything:

"Your Honour, let them show me one sentence, let them show me just one sentence out of these 6 talks of mine or out of 60 talks of mine or out of thousands of talks of mine… let them show me one sentence in which I said that what the PKK or FETÖ did was legitimate, and I am ready to accept everything."

The talks against the organisations did not enter the file

What is not in a file carries as much meaning as what is. The court asked the police to send the talks that had been made against those organisations. According to Kuytul's statement at the same hearing, despite the instruction not one of these talks was sent. Yet none of them was secret; they had been sitting in open sources for years.

One of the examples on record is the statement he made after the bomb attack carried out on the governor's office building in Adana on 25 November 2016:

"Rights are not sought by killing innocent people. Rights are not sought by killing soldiers and police."

The same talk for the fourth time

The way the file was built was also described in the defence statement. The prosecutor's office had examined his talk about the Suruç events twice and had twice given a decision of non-prosecution. The third time the matter was taken to court and Kuytul was acquitted. The same talk was raised a fourth time, this time in the file at the 11th High Criminal Court.

Alongside this went the adding of a new talk to the file at every sitting; one talk entered the file fourteen months after the arrest. Kuytul's objection was one of procedure: he has thousands of talks, and if a new one is added at every hearing the case will never end.

The court's first reaction

When it first saw the indictment, the 11th High Criminal Court sent it back. Upon the objection of the prosecutor's office it was left with no choice but to accept the indictment. After the acceptance the court decided to sever the case and, ruling that it had no jurisdiction over the charges other than propaganda, sent that part of the file to the 4th High Criminal Court. The hearing date for the file, in which nine people were held in pre-trial detention, remained unknown for months.

Another institution that looked at the talks

Upon the complaints made to it, the Directorate General of Foundations carried out both the inspection of the foundation and an assessment of Kuytul's talks. The inspection report was later added to the indictment and appeared on page 50 of it. The assessment in the report is this: Kuytul's talks and acts are not in a position that constitutes an offence in terms of foundations legislation.

This is not a judgment of acquittal and should not be presented as one; it is an administrative assessment limited to the supervision of foundations. The report itself does not stop here either, but goes on. Its important side is this: the institution charged with looking at the talks looked at them and, within its own field, saw no aspect constituting an offence. What the same document says with regard to responsibility is dealt with under a separate heading.

The course of the file

The hearings were adjourned one after another. The sitting of 4 July 2019 was the fourth adjournment; that day Kuytul had been in detention for seventeen months, and the hearing was put off to 18 October 2019. His release came on 5 December 2019.

Of the propaganda imputation neither a sentence nor a document remained. The only thing left is how long a piece of evidence that cannot be shown was able to keep a person inside.

Related topics: the claim of membership of four terrorist organisations at the same time — the charge that came before this imputation and was withdrawn; the claim of links to terrorist organisations — the TEM, MİT and KOM documents in the file. All the dates on this page belong to the 2016–2019 range.