The claim that an ISIS member was his student
Distorted
Claim
Fact
After the operation of 30 January 2018 two lists of names were circulated in the media; both were given under the headline "his student turned out to be an ISIS member". In both cases what is described is the reverse of the claim.
The first name. The ISIS member said to be his "student" is the person who stated to the police that they had come to Adana in order to assassinate Kuytul. What lies before us is not a teacher-student relationship but a target. Kuytul's name appeared on the death list in the magazine ISIS published on the internet, and members of the police asked him whether he wanted protection.
The second list. Those named on it are people who left the community years ago — and the reason they left is Kuytul's stance against armed jihad. They left because they did not embrace that stance, charted a separate path for themselves, and some of them went on to speak against him for years.
When he was asked about these reports, his answer was short:
"Our stance and our view are both clear. We have made statements about ISIS many times by now, our view is clear; that it has issued a death threat is clear too, everyone knows this."
Why this label, "Distorted"?
The part that is true is this: there are no fabricated names here. One of them really is an ISIS member, and the others really did come and go at the community for a period.
But this is not a fault, because the direction of both relationships is reversed: the first is a person who came to assassinate Kuytul, while the others are people who left precisely because of his stance against armed jihad. Real material was turned upside down and made into news.
How was the claim constructed?
After the operation of 30 January 2018, headlines of the kind "a link with such and such a terrorist organisation has emerged" circulated for days on television and on news sites. What these headlines rested on were two lists of names. Both of them, on a little examination, refute the claim itself.
The first name: not a student, but a target
The ISIS member of whom it was said "he turned out to be Kuytul's student" is the person who stated to the police that they had come to Adana in order to assassinate Kuytul. The relationship a person has with someone who comes to kill them is not called teaching.
Nor does this stand alone. Because he criticised ISIS, Kuytul received threats from that organisation many times; his name appeared on the death list of the magazine the organisation published on the internet; members of the police came and asked him whether he wanted protection. This is the only bond between him and ISIS.
The second list: the reason for the break is the reverse of the claim
Those on the second list are people who came to the community years ago and left within a short time. The reason they left is plain: they did not embrace Kuytul's stance against armed jihad. Some of them left while openly citing this disagreement as their reason and criticised him online for it; one went so far that the foundation was compelled to issue a public statement saying "we have no connection with him". Semra Kuytul recounts these one by one in the reply dated 21 July 2018.
People who left someone's side because they did not share that person's view cannot be presented as evidence of that person's view. Those who drew up the list have, without realising it, documented how clear Kuytul's stance was.
The view was stated years earlier, not in 2018
This is the side of the claim that is easiest to test, because the dates are on record.
In an answer dated 30 May 2010 he says that weapons are not the only form of jihad, and that in countries like Turkey the task of Muslims is education, conveying the message and raising scholars. On 15 February 2014 he gives this reply to the claim that he supports armed organisations:
"Our life is out in the open, what we have done since our childhood is known. To this day we have not so much as slapped anyone. If we were supporting armed organisations, there would by now be some evidence of it. We have been saying from the beginning that this work cannot be done with weapons."
Assessing ISIS on the same date, he says that rather than fighting Bashar al-Assad the organisation is fighting the Muslim groups there, and asks whom this serves. On 23 August 2014 he sets out his basic thesis on conflict zones:
"America's new strategy is to create conflict zones in various parts of the world, to draw sincere young Muslims there and to destroy them there."
This sentence was framed in order to hold young people back from going to those regions. The police letter that entered the 2018 file also records separately that Kuytul "did not consider it right to go to conflict zones" — the line that those who produced the claim did not read is once again that same line.
What is left?
The claim of closeness to an armed structure is one of the easiest claims to test in retrospect: over an activity spanning more than thirty years it would have had to leave a trace. According to what is reported in the reply dated 21 July 2018, the searches carried out in 2018 at the homes and at the foundation building did not turn up so much as a penknife that could be counted an element of crime; and out of hundreds of conferences and events there remains no record of a broken chair or a stone thrown.
Why "Distorted"?
Because the claim is not wholly fabricated; it is built on a real name, a real statement and a real break, and then turned upside down. The person who came to carry out an assassination is presented as a student, and those who left over a difference of view are presented as continuity.
For another claim produced from the same file: the claim that Salafi and takfirist individuals attended the talks. All the dates on this page belong to 2018 and earlier.