The claim that he supports armed organisations
Unfounded
Claim
Fact
This claim was not born with the operation of 30 January 2018. The same sentence was put to Alparslan Kuytul as a question on 15 February 2014, and his answer was placed on the record that day.
The basis of the answer is simple: there is a record of activity spanning more than thirty years, all of it public — recorded talks, hundreds of conferences, a registered foundation. In a past like this, support given to an armed organisation could not have failed to leave a trace.
"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."
In the same answer he rejects the armed path not only for Turkey, but for the most contested scene of those days as well:
"We have been saying from the beginning that this work cannot be done with weapons. Let alone Turkey, for two and a half years I have been saying that it should not have been like this even in Syria."
The state's own record points in the same direction. The letter of the Counter-Terrorism Department that is part of the case file opened with the operation of 30 January 2018, and that was published by his lawyer in September 2018, states that the foundation has been operating legally since 1994 and that no link to any terrorist organisation could be found.
The only connection that can be established with ISIS runs in the opposite direction: Kuytul's name appeared on a death list published by the organisation, and after the threats he received the police offered him protection.
All the documents and dates on this page belong to the case file opened with the operation of 30 January 2018. His position on armed jihad is dealt with under a separate heading: the claim that he advocates armed jihad.
The claim is not new, and it has never had any evidence
The sentence "these people support armed organisations" was not invented in 2018. In the records of the questions put to the Furkan Foundation and the answers given, this claim had already been raised on 15 February 2014. The years that have passed have changed nothing as far as the claim is concerned: neither in 2014 nor afterwards could a single piece of concrete evidence of support be produced.
And that is exactly the logic the answer sets up. If a group has for thirty years been giving its talks at open addresses and on the record, if it holds its conferences in indoor sports halls in front of thousands of people, if its publications are there for all to see, then a hidden connection to weapons cannot run for so long without leaving a trace.
Syria: words spoken before the claim
The rejection of the armed path is not a defence produced after the fact against an accusation. In the answer dated 15 February 2014 he says that he has been explaining this for two and a half years — that is, since the earliest period of the war in Syria. In those days, while many circles in Turkey were meeting events in an entirely different language, what he said was that the armed solution was not right in Turkey, let alone in Syria.
In the refutation of a claim the order of the dates matters: here the defence came before the claim.
The records that entered the case file
After the operation of 30 January 2018 the foundation's activities were examined from beginning to end. The documents that emerged showed the opposite of the claim:
- The letter of the Counter-Terrorism Department Directorate that is part of the case file and was published by his lawyer in September 2018: the foundation has been operating legally since 1994, it has 33 branches across the country, and no link to any terrorist organisation could be found.
- According to the defence statement of the former head of the foundation in court, the audit report of the chief inspector of the Directorate General of Foundations reached the same conclusion and stated that the foundation's management had no link to any terrorist organisation.
- The same defence statement notes that the foundation received a plaque as an exemplary foundation from the Police Directorate in 2013 or 2014.
- According to what Semra Kuytul reported in her text dated 21 July 2018, not a single implement that could be counted as an element of crime was found in the searches of the home and of the foundation.
The only contact with ISIS: a death list
Kuytul criticised ISIS openly and repeatedly. What came back in return were threats from the organisation; his name appeared on the death list in the magazine ISIS published on the internet, and police officers asked him whether he wanted protection. Sometimes this is the shortest way to test a claim: an organisation does not put the person who supports it on a death list.
The "ISIS student" claim, used to turn this picture around, is taken up under a separate heading.
The argument from the names who "left and went"
The ground most often used for the claim in fact works against it. As is recalled in the reply text dated 21 July 2018, some of the names put forward as evidence are people who parted from Kuytul precisely because he opposed armed jihad, some of whom spoke against him for years; about one of them the foundation had to make a public statement saying "we have no connection with them". The existence of these names is evidence not of support but of separation. The claim built on who came and went at the open talks is on a separate page.
Conclusion
There is no document, no incident, no investigative finding to carry the claim. Against it stand an official intelligence assessment saying the opposite of the claim, an audit report, a police plaque, and recorded words spoken years before the claim. That is why the assessment is "Unfounded".
All the documents and dates on this page belong to the case file opened with the operation of 30 January 2018.