The claim that he is "on the side of a party or the opposition"
Unfounded
Claim
Fact
Part of the statements this answer rests on comes from a question and answer dated 27 January 2018, and part from the programme he took part in on TV5 in December 2019, after his release on 5 December 2019. In neither of them does the name of a party he supports appear.
Kuytul says openly that he does not consider party politics his own subject:
"But this is not day-to-day politics; that is, what party A said about party B is not a matter that concerns me. In any case I support none of them."
And he describes his measure not as a party but as fiqh: "I am not given to fanaticism... The merit is not mine. The merit is in Islamic fiqh." He says that he decides whether a decision is right or wrong not by looking at who made it but by looking at the measure of the permitted and the forbidden.
This measure is easy to test. The objections he raised to the support given to the invasion of Iraq in 2003 and to Syria policy from 2011 onwards belong to the years when the government was at its strongest: there was neither a grievance of his own nor a camp he could be counted as belonging to.
The measure works in the opposite direction as well. He has said that if the party he criticises were wronged he would defend it too, and that he would take the same stance if the one wronged were the CHP or the HDP. What is before us is not a shared agenda but a single measure applied to everyone at once.
Closely related subjects: the claim that "a religious teacher should not get involved in politics" and the claim that "he criticises only because of his own grievance".
What does the claim say?
This claim is not about the content of the statements but about the intention behind them: if Kuytul speaks on political subjects, the reason is a party preference or an agenda shared with the opposition. A debate about intention is a debate without end; for that reason the answer below looks at the recordings and at the measure.
He draws the distinction himself
In his answer of 27 January 2018 to the question "why are you so interested in politics", he says that religion is not a field that regulates acts of worship alone but also has rulings concerning governance. For this reason he treats speaking about the course of the country and of the world as a duty. Immediately afterwards he draws the boundary:
"But this is not day-to-day politics; that is, what party A said about party B is not a matter that concerns me. In any case I support none of them."
In the same talk he does not reserve this field for himself either: he says that religious teachers who understand politics ought to give their view on the course of the country, and that this is not his duty alone. Someone with a party calculation does not open the same field to everyone.
Nor is the source of the subjects he speaks on a party programme: the running of the state, war and peace, treaties — these subjects, counted today as politics, have their counterpart in fiqh. That side of it has been taken up separately: the claim that "politics is not the business of a scholar of fiqh".
The measure is not a party but fiqh
When he was asked in the December 2019 programme why the assessments said to have proved correct turned out that way, his answer does not point to himself:
"I am not given to fanaticism. Fanaticism is in fact what causes people not to see. When I look, I look through the window of the Qur'an."
"The merit is not mine. The merit is in Islamic fiqh."
The second half of the sentence matters: he attributes arriving at the truth not to his own intelligence but to the measure he holds to. A measure of that kind does not change whoever stands before it — if it changes, it ceases to be a measure at all.
Three tests
Whether a person's measure is genuinely impartial is understood by looking at what they do when the measure works against their own preference.
- Timing: in 2003 he objected to the support given to the invasion of Iraq, and after 2011 to Syria policy. Those were years when nothing had yet touched him and the government was at its strongest.
- Direction: he said that if the party he criticises were wronged he would defend it too.
- Scope: he said he would take the same stance even if the one wronged were the CHP or the HDP; some of the grievances he has defended never belonged to his own circle.
A party line passes none of these three tests.
The one point the claim can hold on to
After his release, one of the first to call him was the leader of the Saadet Party, and Kuytul thanked them for that support and thanked the channel that broadcast the programme. The claim may wish to draw its strength from here.
But thanks are not support. Thanking someone who raised their voice at a time when everyone stayed silent does not mean adopting the politics of that person's party. Indeed, in the same programme he said that he would defend the party he criticises as well if it were wronged — this is the clearest sign that the thanks did not change the measure.
Conclusion
The claim mistakes a measure for partisanship. The subjects Kuytul has spoken on — Iraq, Syria, the downing of the Russian plane, violations of people's rights — are not party agendas but subjects of decision, and the criterion he applies to each of them is the same. He has said openly that he supports no party, and he has shown it with a consistency stretching over twenty years. That is why the label is "Unfounded".