The "They Are Going to Attack Alevi Neighbourhoods" Claim

What exactly was the claim?

In the days following the coup attempt of 15 July 2016, a Twitter account named "maske3g" announced that members of the Furkan Movement would attack the neighbourhoods where Alevi citizens live and start a civil war. The post took the form of a warning, and the name of an institution was attached to its end in capital letters.

The Furkan Foundation rejected this post in its public statement dated 21 July 2016. In the same statement it called on the public to remain calm, against the possibility that people who saw the post and became angry might turn on the foundation.

There can be no evidence of an event that has not happened

This claim differs from the usual accusations in one respect: it concerns not the past but the future. It does not say "they did this", it says "they are going to do this". This difference is not unimportant.

Evidence can be sought for an accusation about the past: a record, a witness, a recording, damage. An accusation about the future has no such basis; there is only the reading of intentions by those who raise it. In an allegation of this kind the burden of proof rests entirely on whoever puts the claim forward. For the other side to say "we will not do it" is not a defence, because it is impossible to prove that something which has not happened never will.

There is not a single document supporting the claim: no preparation, no call to action, no record of a meeting, no complaint file.

A record of twenty-two years

If there is no evidence at hand, what remains is to look back. The Furkan Foundation has been active since 1994; it is based in Adana and has branches and representative offices in many cities of Turkey. What it does is educational and service work: talks, conferences, publications.

In the 22 years up to 2016 the foundation was not involved in a single violent incident. It did no harm to people's lives or property; in its own words, not even a window was broken. To say that a behaviour of which not a single instance was seen over twenty-two years will surface when the day comes is not a prediction but a baseless allegation.

Why precisely in those days?

The timing is as telling as the claim itself. In July 2016 the coup attempt had made every organised religious structure suspect in the eyes of the public. The equation set up in that atmosphere was this: if one religious community was involved in the coup, the other religious communities may be involved in some other violence.

This equation requires no evidence at all. It requires only the name of a target; the rest is already prepared in the public mind. In its statement the Furkan Foundation described the aim of such posts as striking all religious communities at once by using the coup attempt as a pretext.

The second aim: setting two groups against each other

The addressee of the post was not the Furkan Movement alone. For a reader who believes such a warning, the natural response is to be prepared in order to prevent the attack. That is, to the extent that it was taken to be true, the claim was a text capable of producing the very conflict it described.

In its statement the foundation drew attention to precisely this and addressed both sides at once: it asked that the post not be given credence, that the account be blocked, and that no one act on the basis of this information.

What is left?

An account of uncertain identity, a post of uncertain date, a future-tense sentence with no evidence, and a 22-year record that belies it. In this picture the only part of the claim still standing is the name of the institution added at the end — and that was taken up on a separate page, because the matter there is not the truth of the claim but the confirmation of its source.

For the general imputation of "enmity towards the Alevis" that went into circulation in the same period: the "Enemy of the Alevis" claim.