Disinformation Around the August 2026 Judicial Process
The claim that the case file contains a FETÖ contact list
Unverifiable
Claim
Fact
22 August 2026. A table of contacts said to appear in the investigation file conducted by the Adana Chief Public Prosecutor's Office was posted from a journalist's X account. According to the post, the telephone contacts of those responsible at nine levels of the organisation included twenty-four names who had been the subject of judicial proceedings under the FETÖ/PDY heading.
24 August 2026. Fatih İşci, one of the lawyers on the case, answered. What he reported was not an opinion but an act: he had shown the post to the prosecutor handling the file in person.
"He was taken aback himself when he saw the list. He said: 'Because there is a confidentiality order on the file you cannot look at it, but there is definitely no list of this kind in our file.'"
İşci added that the prosecutor was troubled by the situation and had said that if a complaint were made he would start the necessary proceedings.
The second point concerns the course of the file itself: not a single question about FETÖ was put either in the police statement or in the questioning before the Magistrates' Court. When Alparslan Kuytul tried in his defence to set out that the police and intelligence service reports showed no connection with terrorist organisations, the judge said that this had nothing to do with the file and that the terrorist-organisation claim was not in the file.
Why is this labelled "Unverifiable"?
Because what the claim is about is the contents of a file under a confidentiality order. The public cannot see that file; on the lawyers' account, the defence cannot see it either. The claim therefore cannot be verified from outside, nor can the statement against it be shown with a document. We have two things: a table reported by a publication, and the statement of the lawyer on the case, resting on his conversation with the prosecutor.
To label this "Unfounded" would be to put a statement we cannot verify in the place of a document. But three things ought to be recorded:
- If the contents of a confidential file are being published, that information is coming not from those who have the right to see the file but from somewhere else.
- The prosecutor handling the file said that he did not recognise the table he was shown.
- In the investigation's own proceedings — the statement and the questioning — the subject of FETÖ was never opened at all.
This page concerns two posts, dated 22 and 24 August 2026. It is about an ongoing judicial process; nothing said here is a finding of guilt or innocence.
This claim was raised again on 7 September 2026 on CNN Türk's "Tarafsız Bölge" programme. For the answer to the accusations listed in that programme, taken together: Cübbeli Ahmet's claims about the Furkan Movement on CNN Türk — the full text of the Furkan Movement's statement.
What does the claim say?
The text posted on 22 August 2026 describes a "contact table" said to be in the investigation file. According to the text, the table lists the levels of the organisation — founder, women's officer, secretary, general officer, education, internet, social media, press and publications, accounting, technical team, magazine, madrasa and district responsibilities — and among the telephone contacts of the nine people said to hold these positions, people who had been the subject of judicial proceedings or held a registered affiliation under the FETÖ/PDY heading were identified.
The figures are given as follows: twenty-four different names in the contact lists of the nine officials, and twenty-eight records in all, because some names appear in more than one person's list. Every one of the five officials described as being at large is said to be in contact with at least one of these names.
What does the answer say?
Two days later, on 24 August 2026, Fatih İşci, one of the lawyers on the case, answered. At the centre of the answer is a single sentence: "Not even the letter F of FETÖ is in this file."
What İşci describes is not a claim but something he did: he showed the post to the prosecutor handling the file in person. On his account the prosecutor was taken aback when he saw the list and said there was no such list in the file; he added that he was troubled by the situation and that he would start the necessary proceedings if a complaint were made.
The investigation's own proceedings
The second half of the answer concerns how the file has proceeded: according to İşci, not a single question about FETÖ was put either in the statement at the police station or in the questioning before the Magistrates' Court.
According to the same statement, when Alparslan Kuytul tried during his defence to set out that the police and intelligence service reports showed no connection between himself and the Furkan Foundation and any terrorist organisation, the judge said that these had nothing to do with the file, that the terrorist-organisation claim was not in the file, and that there was no need to go into these matters.
This distinction is not a small one. What is asked in an investigation shows what that investigation is looking into. If a subject was never opened either in the statement or in the questioning, then to say that this subject is what the file is about runs against the file's own record.
What does "contact" mean, and what does it not mean?
What tables of this kind do not say is more than what they do say. A name appearing in a telephone book or a call record does not show that any joint undertaking was carried on with that person. Contact is a two-sided and deliberate relationship; what an investigation looks for is well known: instructions, money, joint action, organisational communication.
A name appearing in a record shows none of these on its own. An institution with branches in thirty-three provinces, holding its conferences and its charity fairs in public, has thousands of people around it; which investigations those people have been the subject of in the past is not the institution's choice.
What the same family of documents — the police and intelligence service letters — said in earlier files is recorded separately and is not the subject of this page; the detail is under the headings the claim of a connection with a terrorist organisation and the claim of a FETÖ connection.
A file under a confidentiality order
The one thing this page can say with certainty is what cannot be known. There is a confidentiality order on the file. On the lawyers' statement, the defence is unable to examine it. If a table concerning the contents of such a file is being published openly, the question of where that information came from comes before the claim itself.
The statement on the other side lies within the same limit: what the prosecutor said has been reported, not shown with a written document. For that reason this page does not declare either side right; it records what the two of them said and what cannot be verified from outside.
This page takes as its subject two posts dated 22 and 24 August 2026. The names of the people in the text of the claim have not been repeated one by one here: to publish permanently, next to the heading of a terrorist organisation, the names of people against whom no court has ruled would serve no purpose other than multiplying the claim itself.