The claim that "there was a state of emergency, and they tried to hold an event despite the ban"

Let us separate two things first

Two separate events that took place in Adana on Saturday, 22 April 2017 are relayed in the claim as though they were one. The first is the conference banned by the governor's office. The second is the press statement that was to be made the next day and that met with police intervention. Their subjects and their legal positions are both different.

The conference and the ban decision

The Furkan Foundation first wanted to rent the municipality's Mimar Sinan Open-Air Theatre, and it was not granted. The Aqua Park hall was then rented. The subject of the conference was The Exemplary Human Being: The Prophet. Word of the ban came through the police the day before the programme, on Friday, 21 April 2017.

The scope of the decision is what matters here. While the governor's office banned activities that might be held anywhere in the province under the foundation's name or by persons having a connection with or affiliation to the foundation, it limited them to those in connection with the event in question. That is, the decision was wide as to persons and places but narrow as to subject: what it covered was activities relating to that event. It was not a ban that took in every subject and every time.

The subject of the press statement was different

The agenda of the statement that was to be made was not the conference. The journalist Cem Küçük had used a heavy epithet for those who took part in the Mavi Marmara, and the statement had been planned as an answer to those words. To say that a ban decision relating to the conference also covered a statement on another subject goes beyond what the decision itself says.

The legal framework

In Turkey the right of assembly and demonstration is not subject to prior permission. Two separate provisions say so plainly:

• Article 34 of the Constitution — everyone may hold unarmed and non-aggressive meetings and demonstration marches without prior permission. This right may be restricted only for the purposes of national security, public order, the prevention of the commission of offences, public health and public morals, and the protection of the rights and freedoms of others, and only by law.
• Article 3 of Law No. 2911 — it repeats the same principle: there is a right to hold meetings without prior permission, unarmed and non-aggressive.
• Article 17 of Law No. 2911 — a governor or district governor may postpone a particular assembly by at most one month. Banning, on the other hand, is tied to a separate and heavier condition: the existence of a clear and imminent danger that an offence will be committed.

The criterion here is not a possibility but a concrete danger. That no incident occurred at hundreds of conferences held over the years is the plainest piece of data showing that this condition was not met.

The place had been chosen deliberately too

There were about ten places in the city where the Adana Governor's Office had banned the making of press statements. Atatürk Park, chosen for the statement, was not on that list. Nor did the governor's office have any separate decision making press statements subject to permission or banning them in general. The choice of place was made not in order to breach the ban but in order to stay outside the banned areas.

How the intervention unfolded

During the incident Kuytul reminded the police chief that the subject of the statement was Cem Küçük's words and that there was no requirement to obtain permission for a press statement in Adana. The chief could not say that the statement too fell within the scope of the ban; yet he gave the order to intervene without asking the governor's office. Those who came early to the park were met with pepper gas and pressurised water; many people were injured, and one woman's headscarf was pulled.

The plainest answer about the grounds of the ban came from the deputy governor: programmes with this content were banned. That is, the matter was not a security assessment but the subject of the programme.

The answer given to the question "Why did you go?"

The objection repeated most often after the incident was that people went there even though it was known that trouble would break out. Kuytul's answer is short:

"I went in order to exercise my right. I am not obliged to obtain permission."

If an intervention has come while a right was being exercised, the first question to ask is not why the person exercising the right went there, but on which decision the intervention rested.

But does the state of emergency not change this?

The state of emergency gives governors' offices the power to ban meetings and demonstration marches or to make them subject to permission. But that power has to have been used; a ban does not arise of itself. The Adana Governor's Office had no such decision making press statements subject to permission. The rule in force for that day was therefore Article 34 of the Constitution and Article 3 of Law No. 2911.

All the dates on this page belong to the years 2016-2017; they have nothing to do with the case opened by the operation of 30 January 2018. A similar case in the same group: Was the İskenderun conference really cancelled on "security" grounds?