Cropped Videos and Distorted Statements
The "He Called the People Who Took to the Streets on 15 July Murderers" Claim
Out of context
Claim
Fact
The speech in question was delivered after the coup attempt of 15 July 2016, at a time when a decree-law concerning those who fought against the coup was being debated. The video put into circulation is a few seconds of that speech.
When the full recording is listened to, the question of whom the word "murderer" was addressed to is closed to debate. About the people who took to the streets, Kuytul says the following in the same speech:
"Those who took to the streets against the coup are not going to be put on trial anyway; they have no offence anyway."
The word "murderer", on the other hand, is used a few sentences later for an entirely different group: for those who beheaded the privates brought to the bridge after being told "there is a drill", who knew nothing of the coup plan, and for those who threw them down from the bridge.
"How do you know that he came there knowingly for the coup? Do you not know that a soldier obeys his commander and goes out? How did you know, that you executed him? Are you a judge, are you an executioner?"
So what the speech does is draw a distinction: on one side the people resisting the coup, on the other those lynching deceived soldiers. The cropping erased precisely this distinction and stuck the sentence onto an addressee it does not belong to.
Why this label, "Out of context"?
Because there is a side of the claim that is true: that word really was said. The recording is not fake, the sentence is not fabricated. What was changed is the addressee of the word.
And what was said is not a fault. To object to a private who was brought to the bridge by deception and knew nothing of the coup being killed in the middle of the street, and to demand that the perpetrator be put on trial, is the law itself. To tear a sentence out of the place it belongs to, on the other hand, has turned words demanding justice into an accusation.
Which speech, which period?
The speech belongs to the days when a decree-law issued after the coup attempt of 15 July 2016 and concerning those who fought against the coup was being debated. Kuytul is assessing the scope of that decree: if it is said that the text "concerns only 15 July", he wants this to be written explicitly in the decree.
"Since it concerns only 15 July, then write this: 'Those who took to the streets against the coup plotters on 15 July, who tried to stop the coup, who climbed onto the tank, are not put on trial, they will not be put on trial.' Write it like that, fine. If that really is your intention."
So the objection is not to the protection of those who took to the streets, but to the text being left vague.
Where is the cut?
In the body of the speech there are two separate groups, and Kuytul mentions them separately. The first is the people who took to the streets against the coup; the sentence he says about them is clear: "they have no offence anyway." The second is those who killed the soldiers who had surrendered on the bridge that night.
The cropped video was produced by leaving out the sentences that speak of the first group. Once only the word "murderer" and the heading of taking to the streets remain, the addressee of the word shifts of its own accord.
What is done here is not a difference of interpretation. The sentences in the speech that separate the addressees have been removed; once the part showing whom a sentence was addressed to is deleted, the remaining excerpt becomes something that can be pinned to any address one wishes.
Whom was "murderer" said to?
The rest of the speech itself describes the address of the word: privates who were brought to the bridge after being told "there is a drill", who acted on their commander's order, who knew nothing of the coup plan. Kuytul's question is in what capacity those who killed those privates passed judgement:
"Have we not all done military service? The commander says march, and one marches. What does a soldier know? … How did you know, that you executed him? Are you a judge, are you an executioner?"
The criterion here is not a political side but a principle of law: who is guilty is decided not in the street but in court.
This objection does not belong to him alone
Within the speech, Kuytul recalls the words to the same effect of MHP Chairman Devlet Bahçeli: Bahçeli too rejected the beheading of a Turkish soldier, saying "can this happen". Objecting to the lynching of soldiers who had surrendered was not, in those days, a view belonging to a single circle.
Where did the author of the words stand on 15 July?
What really breaks the picture the claim constructs is the open stance of the same person within the same week.
Five days later, on Thursday 21 July 2016, a march and a press statement were held against the coup attempt.
What is left?
A single word has been pulled out of a recording that openly holds those who resisted the coup to be innocent, offers condolences for those who died and organises a march against the coup, and has been stuck onto a group it does not belong to. The claim that remains can stand not with the recording in full, but only in its cropped form.
Another example of the same method: the "He supported America in the Afrin operation" claim — there too, a single sentence was taken from a twelve-minute speech.