Terrorism and Criminal Organisation Accusations
The claim that there is a vault and secret passages in the foundation's building
Distorted
Claim
Fact
The claim spread with a report dated 31 January 2018, the day after the Furkan Foundation operation of 30 January 2018. The report spoke of the "vault" of the foundation's building and wrote that from there a secret passage led to the stationer's next door.
The place called a "vault" is the basement floor of the foundation's building, and the premises there are called the Furkan Youth and Study Centre. What is known about it is this:
- It was opened in 2014 through the provincial governor's office under the SODES programme of the Ministry of Development — that is, it was set up with the state's knowledge, permission and support.
- At its entrance there is a sign announcing that this is a study centre.
- It has been inspected by the ministry at intervals. The last inspection took place about a month before the operation, in December 2017, and the officials who came drew up a favourable report.
- The secondary school and high school students who came here to study for years, their parents and the neighbourhood all know the place.
The same sentence of the report carried two further claims. A court ruling established that the houses called an "unlicensed hostel" were private dwellings, and the seals were lifted. As for the connection with the United Arab Emirates and Egypt, it could not be tied to any document, either then or afterwards.
Why is this labelled "Distorted"?
The part that is true is this: the foundation's building does have a basement floor, and the premises described in the report are there. No place has been invented.
But this is not a failing. Every building with a basement floor has a basement floor, not an underground shelter. To call a study centre opened with state support, with its sign hanging outside and a favourable report a month old, a "vault" is to change not the information but the epithet. That is exactly what distortion is: the same place, described with a different word, comes to look like a crime scene.
What did the report say?
The report of 31 January 2018 wrote that a secret passage from the vault in which the foundation's building stands led into a stationer's shop, that from there a fibre line had been laid to the unlicensed hostel across from the foundation, and that the foundation's social media accounts were run over this line. At the end of the same sentence it was stated that "the organisation's" connections with the United Arab Emirates and Egypt were being investigated.
What is that place?
The premises on the basement floor of the foundation's building are called the Furkan Youth and Study Centre. They were opened in 2014 through the provincial governor's office under SODES (the Social Support Programme) run by the Ministry of Development. That is, this part beneath the building is not an illegal structure but a study area for students supported by the state through a social support programme.
At its entrance there is a sign announcing that it is a study centre. It is an address known to the secondary and high school students who came here to study for years, to the parents who brought them and fetched them, and to the neighbourhood. The place said to be hidden was a place with a sign, which everyone went in and out of.
The state was already inspecting it
Places opened under SODES are inspected by the ministry at intervals. This centre was inspected too. The last inspection took place about a month before the operation, in December 2017, and the officials who came drew up a favourable report.
The real point here is this: the authority that inspects an institution and the outlet that makes a news story of it are inside the same state. A place given a favourable report one month was described as a "vault" the next. Nothing in the building changed between the two; the only thing that changed is the word written about it.
The work the word does
"Basement floor" is a neutral word; most buildings in Turkey have one. "Vault", on the other hand, conjures in the reader's mind a place where things are hidden, hard to get into, without daylight. The same physical space, described with the second word, comes to resemble a crime scene.
The phrase "secret passage" does the same work. The report does not say why this passage counted as secret, by whom or when it was built, or for what purpose it was used. The grounds for the description are not given; the description is.
The other claims in the same paragraph
Four separate claims are lined up side by side in a single sentence of the report. The fate of two of them is known:
- The "unlicensed hostel". One citizen's house had been sealed as a foundation branch and two citizens' houses as hostels. The court established that these houses did not belong to the foundation, that they were private dwellings, and ruled that the seals be lifted. That the foundation had no unregistered hostel is also documented by reports of the Directorate of National Education.
- The foreign connection. The claim of a connection with the United Arab Emirates and Egypt could not be tied to any document. This claim found no place in any subsequent official text.
That four claims are gathered into one sentence is no accident. Asked one by one, each of them has an answer; read one after another, they leave an impression that is hard to examine separately.
The information on this page belongs to the operation of 30 January 2018 and the 2018–2019 file that followed it. It should not be confused with another, ongoing judicial process.