Terrorism and Criminal Organisation Accusations
The claim that the Furkan Foundation has links to terrorist organisations
Unfounded
Claim
Fact
The matter at hand is the terrorism case opened by the operation carried out in Adana on the morning of 30 January 2018 and continued with the arrest of 8 February 2018. The case was heard at the Adana 11th High Criminal Court.
The documents that answer this claim do not come from outside. They are letters written by the very institutions that conducted the investigation, and both were drawn up more than a year before the operation.
- The investigation record of the Adana Counter-Terrorism Branch, dated 9 January 2017. In the intelligence work carried out on the foundation and on the 44 people making up its founders and its board of trustees, it was assessed that they had no contact with any terrorist organisation. At the foot of the record are the signatures of four Counter-Terrorism Branch officers.
- The letter of the Counter-Terrorism Department Directorate. The letter conveys the reply received from the MİT Intelligence Department Directorate: the Furkan Education and Service Foundation, whose headquarters are in Adana, has been operating legally since 1994, and no connection of the foundation in question with any terrorist organisation could be found.
Both letters were inside the investigation file; they were made public in September 2018 by Kuytul's lawyer Adem Tural. That is, while the claim was going into circulation in the media, the record saying the opposite was sitting inside that same file.
This claim was voiced again on 7 September 2026 on the CNN Türk programme "Tarafsız Bölge". The collected answer to the imputations listed on the programme: Cübbeli Ahmet's claims about the Furkan Movement on CNN Türk — the full text of the Furkan Movement's statement.
The examination had been finished a year before the operation
The intelligence work on the Furkan Foundation did not begin with the operation of 30 January 2018. The investigation record of the Adana Counter-Terrorism Branch bears the date 9 January 2017 — thirteen months before the operation.
The record also lists what it found while examining the foundation: representative offices in 33 provinces; lessons in the reading of the Qur'an, in exegesis, in the life of the Prophet and in tawhid; aid in kind and in cash to those in need; scholarships for students; conferences in various provinces; and a monthly magazine. Its final sentence closes the assessment: in the intelligence work carried out on the foundation and on the 44 people making up its founders and its board of trustees, no contact with any terrorist organisation was found.
MİT's reply points the same way
The second document is the letter of the Counter-Terrorism Department Directorate. The letter conveys the answer to the question put to the MİT Intelligence Department Directorate: the foundation has been operating legally since 1994, it has 33 branches across the country, and no connection of the foundation in question with any terrorist organisation could be found.
The unfavourable lines in the same paragraph
This letter is not a text of praise; it also contains findings that look unfavourable to the foundation. There is no need to conceal them, because none of them is a terrorism connection.
- It is recorded that in his talks Kuytul made statements against secularism and democracy, and that he frequently criticised the President, the government and state policies. These are political and intellectual views; not a criminal charge.
- It is written that there is information to the effect that some individuals holding a Salafi or takfirist understanding also took an interest in the foundation's talks. The talks are open to everyone, and a listener's view cannot be ascribed to the speaker.
Immediately before these lines, the same paragraph makes two further findings that say the opposite of the claim: there are statements by Kuytul to the effect that he does not adopt the Salafi and takfirist understanding and does not consider it right to go to conflict zones. And the paragraph ends with the sentence that no connection with a terrorist organisation could be found.
It was also examined from the FETÖ angle
There is a third letter in the file: the examination dated 15 March 2017 that the KOM Branch Directorate of the Adana Provincial Police Directorate sent to the prosecutor's office. A ByLock record, membership of associations that had been closed down, Bank Asya account activity and telephone contact with suspects were each queried one by one, and no record came up in any of them. This screening is dealt with under a separate heading; it is not repeated here.
The documents were inside the file
These letters were not discovered after the fact. All three had been placed in the investigation file, and in September 2018 they were made public by the lawyer Adem Tural. In a conversation from prison, Kuytul summed up the meaning of the documents as follows:
"It turns out that inside the file there is a MİT and police report about me and about the foundation, saying that we have no connection with any terrorist organisation. So as I understand it, God is clearing our name by their hand, thanks be to Him."
The part that lies outside the records
What the documents say is also supported by the foundation's twenty-four-year history: dozens of conferences, press statements and indoor hall events were held, and no incident occurred at any of them. Because of its activities, the foundation was held up by the police as an "exemplary foundation" and awarded a plaque.
Kuytul's stance towards terrorism is also there in the written record. The statement he made after the bomb attack on the building of the governor's office in Adana on 25 November 2016 is clear:
"Rights are not sought by killing innocent people. Rights are not sought by killing soldiers and police."
The separate headings in this file: the claim of membership of four terrorist organisations at the same time, the terrorism propaganda claim, the FETÖ connection claim and the claim of an ISIS link built on a suspect who attended the talks. All the dates on this page belong to the years between 2016 and 2019.