Terrorism and Criminal Organisation Accusations
The Report That 20 Years in Prison Was Sought for Him
Out of context
Claim
Fact
23 July 2019. Alparslan Kuytul has been in pre-trial detention since 8 February 2018, and a week earlier a new indictment concerning him was drawn up. That day, through the Anadolu Agency wire, the same headline appears at the same moment on a great many news sites: 20 years in prison sought for Alparslan Kuytul.
The figure in the headline is not a court decision. It is a calculation arrived at by adding up the upper sentencing limits laid down by the articles listed in the indictment drawn up in July 2019. That is, not a sentence given by a judge, but the arithmetic of the charges brought by a prosecutor.
The difference is not a small one. An indictment is an allegation; it is written before the evidence is argued, before the defence is heard, before any hearing is held. Twenty years is a ceiling figure that appears at a stage where no offence has been established at all.
The news headline erased this stage and left behind only the number.
This page is not about how the July 2019 indictment was later concluded, but about what the headline published on 23 July 2019 meant.
Why this label, "Out of context"?
Because those who ran the report did not invent the figure. In July 2019 a new indictment really was drawn up, and when the upper limits of the articles in that indictment are added together, a figure close to twenty years does come out. We do not deny this.
But the sentence sought and the sentence handed down are not the same thing. The first is the allegation of the prosecutor's office, the second is the court's decision. A headline saying "20 years in prison" does not show that the person has committed twenty years' worth of offences, but that a case has been opened against them under those articles. The same calculation can be made for every file that ends in acquittal as well — and had it been made, it would have produced numbers of the same size.
A second point should be written separately: in the terrorism file opened with the operation of 30 January 2018, Kuytul was released on 5 December 2019. That is four and a half months after that headline, and it shows the distance between the impression the headline left on the reader and the actual course of the process.
How did the report come out?
In the middle of July 2019 a new indictment concerning Alparslan Kuytul was drawn up. A week later, on 23 July 2019, the same headline was published almost simultaneously on a great many news sites: 20 years in prison is being sought for him. The figure first came out through the Anadolu Agency channel; the others relayed the agency wire.
This was not the announcement of a new development. It was a calculation made on an indictment written a week earlier, turned into news.
Where does the figure come from?
In an indictment the prosecutor's office writes down the articles under which it wants the defendant to be tried. Every article has a lower and an upper limit in the law. When the upper limits of the listed articles are added up one beneath the other, a number appears. The twenty years in the report is that number.
What this number does not say is more than what it says:
- It is not a court decision; at that date no hearing had yet been held.
- It is not evidence; an indictment is not where the evidence is argued, but where it is requested that the evidence be argued.
- Nor is it a concrete demand for a sentence; the prosecutor's office states the sentence it seeks at the end of the trial, in its final opinion on the merits.
- It does not contain the defendant's defence; an indictment is one-sided.
In short, twenty years is the ceiling of the charges on paper. The same calculation can be made for files that end in acquittal, and it gives numbers of a similar size.
Why was it given such a large headline?
Since the figure itself carries no news value, its real function is a different one: it takes up space in a headline and leaves whoever reads it with the impression of a conviction already decided. In the same week, while the content of the indictment was being discussed publicly, a number took the place of that discussion.
The information the reader actually needed was not in the report: which articles the case was opened under, what the concrete acts taken as the basis for those articles were, what evidence had been placed in the file, and what answer the defence gave to it. None of this fits into a number; a number, on the other hand, can take the place of all of it.
At that date Kuytul had been in pre-trial detention since 8 February 2018. On 5 December of the same year he was released in the terrorism file opened with the operation of 30 January 2018.
What happened in Adana that evening?
On the evening of the day the report came out, a press statement was made at İnönü Park in Adana. The statement set out the source of the report, the fact that the figure was a calculation drawn from the indictment, and the political character of the process.
Background
The Furkan Education and Service Foundation was established in Adana on 22 November 1994. After the operation of 30 January 2018 a trustee was appointed to the foundation. For the work it carried out, the foundation had been held up as a model foundation by the Police Directorate and had received a plaque, and plaques had also been presented to it several times by the neighbourhood headmen of districts of Adana with a high crime rate.
So the picture the figure in the headline points to and the foundation's record up to that day do not match. None of the outlets that turned the figure into news placed these two side by side.
All the dates on this page belong to the 2018–2019 period and should not be confused with a separate judicial process continuing today. The later course of the July 2019 indictment lies outside the scope of this page. Other headings from the same period: the terrorist propaganda claim and the claim of founding a criminal organisation.