The "He Supported the Turkish Olympiads" Claim

Unfounded

Claim

Alparslan Kuytul supported the Turkish Olympiads organised by the Gülen community and stood up for that event.

Claimed by: A claim widely circulated on social media (no single specific name is given)18 July 2018

Fact

The question was put to Alparslan Kuytul on 16 February 2014, and his answer is on record. The answer is not support but a reasoned objection.

The objection has three points. The first is that the content on stage, although religiously disputed, had become something beyond question. Kuytul expects a plain sentence from those organising the event: do they regard this as forbidden or not? The second, and the weightier one, has to do with who is doing it:

"When a religious community puts on this event, people do not notice that they are going to what is forbidden, that they are looking at what is forbidden."

"Those in the nightclubs are less dangerous than this. Because those in the nightclubs are not doing it in the name of Islam."

So the issue is not that an entertainment programme exists, but that this programme comes to appear lawful once it is done in the name of Islam.

The third point concerns the yardstick. In those years the success of the event was measured by the stadiums that were filled:

"If the aim is to fill the stadiums, you should have invited singers, then they would always have been full."

The date of these words matters. 16 February 2014 falls in a period when the Turkish Olympiads were followed like a state ceremony and criticising them carried a price — these are not words said later, after everyone had begun to speak. As for those who put forward the claim of support, not a single record of attendance, praise or invitation has been produced to this day.

For the criticism in full, together with its dates: the "He criticised Gülen only after 15 July" claim.

When was the question asked?

In the early 2010s the Turkish Olympiads were one of the most visible events in Turkey: they were held in stadiums, broadcast live on television, and senior figures of the state sat among the audience. To object to the event in such a period is not like objecting to it today.

This question was put to Kuytul on 16 February 2014. The answer is on record and is publicly available.

What is the objection to?

At the beginning of the answer, attention is drawn to the change the event had undergone: at first girls of a young age were brought onto the stage, later the age was raised. Kuytul's observation is this: there is no scholar who could call it religiously permissible for a young woman of eighteen or twenty, with her head and arms uncovered, to sing to the accompaniment of music before a crowd made up of men.

From this he draws a contradiction. If the organisers do not regard this as forbidden, they should say so openly; if they do regard it as forbidden, they should explain what they are doing. Unless one of those two sentences is spoken, what is left is a matter that has not been named.

What does "Those in the nightclubs are less dangerous" mean?

This is the most misunderstood part of the answer, whereas what is said is not a comparison but the description of a mechanism:

"Those in the nightclubs are less dangerous than this. Because those in the nightclubs are not doing it in the name of Islam. They do it for pleasure, and sinful people go there knowing full well that it is a sin."

So whoever goes to a nightclub knows what they are doing; their measure is not broken. But when the same content is in the hands of a devout religious community and is presented under the heading of service to Islam, the audience loses its measure. In Kuytul's phrase, people "do not notice that they are going to what is forbidden". The harm lies less in the programme itself than in the erasure of the religious measure.

To this is added the result of the absence of any reaction: since no objection came from Muslim circles, the practice became ordinary, and the idea that it is permissible — an idea that would occur to no one if someone else organised the same programme — took hold.

Is the yardstick the stadium?

The second objection is to the measure of success. In those years, when the event was discussed, what was discussed were the stadiums that had been filled; whether what was being done was religiously proper was not discussed:

"If the aim is to fill the stadiums, you should have invited singers, then they would always have been full. Are you gathering people into the stadiums by conveying the message of the Qur'an?"

The sentence that follows is plainer still: when the dormitories that were established, the money that was collected and the people who were mobilised are set out item by item, if the outcome is only a crowded stadium, then this effort has not received its return.

The "Our Prophet would have attended" defence

In those years there was a sentence often used by those defending the event: if our Prophet were alive today he would attend these programmes. Kuytul answered this defence in a separate question-and-answer recording; the recording is among the videos on this page.

We are not reproducing the text of the answer here: what we have is the recording itself, not a word-for-word transcript. On this page no sentence that cannot be shown to belong to Kuytul is placed within quotation marks — anyone who wonders how the defence was answered can listen to the recording.

Why do we say "Unfounded"?

The claim is a claim of support, and a claim of support requires at the very least an attendance, a sentence of praise or an invitation. None of these has been shown.

The only thing that can be shown is the opposite: a dated, recorded and reasoned objection. What is more, this objection was made at a time when the event was at its peak and whoever criticised it was left alone. The same subject was counted among the errors two years later as well, in the Furkan Nesli article dated 4 February 2016.