Terrorism and Criminal Organisation Accusations
The claim that he incited the people to hatred and enmity
Unfounded
Claim
Fact
This finding stands in the file of the process opened by the operation of 30 January 2018: at the 22 April intervention in Adana and the 29 May intervention in Erzin, Kuytul was seen to have incited the people to rancour and hatred.
The answer to the claim is those two days themselves.
22 April, Adana. The crowd that wanted to make a press statement in an area the governor's office had not banned was met with TOMAs and pepper gas. So as not to tread on the flower bed that lay in its path, the crowd split in two and went round the edge of the area; one of them used a megaphone to remind the others not to step on the flowers. The next day there was not a single crushed flower in Atatürk Park or in Merkez Park.
During the same intervention there were participants who washed the faces of police officers affected by the gas with the water in their hands and held out cartons of milk to them.
29 May, Erzin. The crowd was at the edge of the motorway; there were stones everywhere. Not one of the thousands of people there picked up a stone. While the intervention was going on, unarmed police officers moved about freely among the crowd.
A community that has been incited to hatred and enmity does not behave like this. What is there is not incitement but the exact opposite attitude: from hundreds of conferences held over the years, not a single broken chair and not a single thrown stone was left behind.
The sentence in the file
Into the file prepared in the process opened by the operation of 30 January 2018, a finding was entered against Kuytul: at two public incidents he was seen to have incited the people to rancour and hatred. The events pointed to are the 22 April intervention in Adana and the 29 May intervention in Erzin.
The truth of a finding of this kind is measured not by witness statements but by its results. A crowd that has been incited leaves a trace behind it: broken glass, injured people, burnt vehicles. Let us look at what was left behind after these two events.
22 April: the flowers that were not trodden on
A press statement was to be made in an area the governor's office had not banned. The police, who took up position in the area before the crowd had gathered, began the intervention with TOMAs and pepper gas. According to the participants' account the intervention was harsh: it is reported that gas was sprayed at a baby in a pram, that the stomach of a participant who said she was pregnant was targeted, and that people lying on the ground with their hands cuffed were kicked.
Even so, what happened that day is this. When an area covered with flowers came up in front of the crowd advancing under the gas, the crowd split in two and went round the bed; one of them used a megaphone to remind the others not to step on the flowers. In the footage taken the next day in Atatürk Park and in Merkez Park there was not a single crushed flower.
Water and milk for the police affected by the gas
During the intervention some police officers were affected by the gas as well. People who came forward out of the crowd washed the officers' faces with the water in their hands and held out the cartons of milk they had with them. There are video recordings and photographs of it.
What brings a person to the point of holding out water to someone who sprayed gas at them a moment earlier is not rancour.
29 May, Erzin: stones everywhere, and no one throwing them
The crowd in Erzin was at the edge of the motorway; that is, the ground was covered with stones from one end to the other. Not one of the thousands of people there picked up a stone. Even at the moments when things grew heated and the TOMAs went into action, unarmed police officers moved freely among the crowd.
The file states that the heads of a few police officers were cut open by a thrown stone. Even if this claim is correct, it shows not the opposite but the same result: in an area holding thousands of people with unlimited stones within reach, if there is incitement the result is not a few injured. An isolated incident is evidence not of an organised incitement but, at most, of the absence of that incitement.
What came before and after
These two days are not an exception but the last link in a long chain:
- From hundreds of conferences and events held over the years, not a single broken chair and not a single broken pane of glass was left behind; hall managers and wedding hall owners gave thanks many times for the venues being handed back clean.
- Members of the police said many times that they were at ease at the foundation's programmes.
- According to the statement of the former head of the foundation, in 2013 or 2014 the foundation was held up as a model foundation by the Police Directorate and received a plaque.
- Plaques came several times from the neighbourhood headmen of districts of Adana with a high crime rate, on the ground of the effect the work had on young people.
- The report of the chief inspector of the Directorate General of Foundations states that the foundation's management has no link to any terrorist organisation.
The statement Kuytul made after his Ankara conference was prevented is on the same line:
"We are not enemies of the country, we are not set against our police or our soldiers. We have not thrown a single Molotov in our lives, we have not broken a single pane of glass in our lives, we have not thrown a single stone in our lives."
The claim says the exact opposite of this picture. No one has been able to show a single incident that would close the gap between the two.
The 22 April and 29 May interventions on this page are the events put forward as evidence in the file opened by the operation of 30 January 2018. Because the source texts do not state the year of these two events, no year has been written here either. Other headings from the same process: the claim that he supports terrorism and the claim that the Furkan Foundation is a criminal organisation.