FETÖ and Gülen Community Claims
The claim that "the Furkan Foundation is part of the FETÖ structure"
Unfounded
Claim
Fact
This claim is not about a person but about an institution, and after the operation of 30 January 2018 it became one of the most frequently repeated sentences on television. Yet the foundation had already been screened more than a year before the operation.
The investigation record dated 9 January 2017 of the Counter-Terrorism Branch Directorate examined the Furkan Foundation not only as a legal entity but together with its personnel: the foundation, its founders and its forty-four-member board of trustees. The conclusion of the record, which bears the signatures of four officers, is a single sentence: it was assessed that, in the intelligence work carried out on these persons, no link with any terrorist organization was found.
The second document is the audit letter of the foundations administration. The claim was investigated here through two channels: during the audit of the foundation and by querying the names of the administrators with the State of Emergency Bureau of the Adana Governorship. No serious finding was encountered indicating that the administrators belonged to the FETÖ/PDY structure or supported this structure.
The same letter records that Alparslan Kuytul holds no office on the board of trustees, the executive organ of the foundation, and that he is one of the founders of the foundation; it states that his speeches and actions likewise do not place him in a position constituting an offence under foundations legislation.
In short, the claim about the institution found no support in the examinations carried out by the administration charged with auditing the institution and by the police unit tasked with investigating the claim.
Two separate claims, two separate answers
"Kuytul has a connection with FETÖ" and "the Furkan Foundation is part of the FETÖ structure" are not the same sentence. The first targets a person, the second a legal entity, its management and its financial structure; accordingly, the authorities that investigate them are also different. The documents on the claim about the person are on a separate page. Here the subject is the institution.
No action in the complaint
The application made to the foundations administration is summarized in the audit letter: proceedings were requested against Alparslan Kuytul, but no action or justification on which the request was based was shown. According to the letter, the probable reason for the application is discomfort caused by certain videos.
This also shows the character of the claim. The claim that a foundation is part of an organizational structure is put forward with concrete elements such as money flows, personnel and a chain of instructions. None of these is present here; there is discomfort.
The audit proceeded through two channels
The administration investigated the claim in two separate ways:
- During the audit of the foundation — within the scope of the ordinary examination carried out on the books, records and activities.
- Through the query made with the State of Emergency Bureau of the Adana Governorship — the names of the foundation's administrators were queried one by one. The state of emergency was in force between 21 July 2016 and 19 July 2018; the query belongs to this period, that is, to the interval in which FETÖ/PDY records were screened most intensively.
The result of both channels is the same: no serious finding was encountered indicating that the administrators belonged to this structure or supported it.
Why does the document state Kuytul's position?
A detail in the audit letter looks technical at first glance, but it directly concerns the picture the claim constructs. The complaint requests that proceedings be brought against Kuytul by the foundations administration. The administration, however, records that Kuytul holds no office on the board of trustees, the executive organ of the foundation, and that he is one of the founders of the foundation.
It would be wrong to read this as an evasion of responsibility; Kuytul is the founder of the foundation and his speeches are out in the open. What the document says is legal in nature: the board that governs the foundation and the person who teaches lessons at the foundation are not the same thing, and therefore there is no ground on which proceedings could be instituted under foundations legislation. The administration also writes that his speeches and actions do not place him in a position constituting an offence under this legislation.
The inventory the police drew up themselves
The weakest side of the structuring claim is that the thing alleged requires secrecy. Yet what the foundation does is itemized in the record of the very unit that investigated the claim. The investigation record dated 9 January 2017 lists that the foundation has representative offices in thirty-three provinces, that it is an educational foundation giving Qur'an, exegesis, sira and tawhid lessons, that it provides aid to those in need and scholarships to students, that it organized conferences in many provinces with Kuytul's participation, that in 2015 it also gave conferences in Germany and Denmark, that it published a magazine and that the lessons were broadcast on open websites.
All of this is the information section of the record — that is, the state knows the foundation's activities address by address. The concluding sentence of the record, for its part, covers the foundation, its founders and its forty-four-member board of trustees together: in the intelligence work carried out on these persons, no link with any terrorist organization was found.
For a structure that has a record of everything it has done for more than twenty years, no gap remains that could carry the claim of being "part of a secret organization".
Conclusion
The verdict is "Unfounded", because the side rejecting the claim is not the foundation itself but the institutions charged with auditing the foundation and with investigating the claim. On one side there is a signed investigation record, an audit letter and a State of Emergency Bureau query; on the other side a complaint petition in which not even an action is shown, and news reports that appeared after the operation.
Transparency note: the portion of the audit letter in our possession is a page fragment, and the marked sentence continues with the phrase although it is seen that. This page conveys only what the readable part says; no sentence has been formed about whether any other assessment appears in the remainder of the letter. All of the documents belong to the 2017–2018 period and to the case file opened with the operation of 30 January 2018.