Russia and Foreign Policy Claims
The claim about the remark "go ahead and shoot down Russia's plane"
Out of context
Claim
Fact
The remark occurs in a talk given before the plane crisis. When Turkey shot down a Russian warplane on 24 November 2015, the sentence was put in front of Alparslan Kuytul under the headline "this is what you said, look how we shot it down" and presented as a prophecy that had proved wrong.
Yet the sentence was not a prediction but a warning. Kuytul's own explanation sets this out without leaving room for hesitation:
"When I said that, did I mean 'you cannot shoot the plane down'? A plane shoots down a plane, of course it does. What did I mean? I meant that when you think about the consequences of this you will understand that you should not do it. But unfortunately this happened as well."
The purpose of the talk as a whole is the same: "let us not fall into the trap, let us drop the swaggering talk. A state is not run like this." What is at issue, then, is not Turkey's strength but the bill for using that strength.
Why this label, "Out of context"?
The side of the claim that is true is this: this sentence really was uttered. We are not saying there is no such remark; the remark is there.
But this is not a fault. When what comes before and after the sentence is listened to, it can be seen to be part of a warning rather than of a prediction. The expression, which looks like a challenge when left on its own, means "work out the consequences" when left in place. The claim does not report the sentence wrongly; it pulls the sentence out of the sentences it sits among.
There are two separate points in time
What is confused under this heading is the date. The sentence "go ahead and shoot down Russia's plane" occurs in a talk Alparslan Kuytul gave before the plane crisis. Turkey's shooting down of a Russian warplane, on the other hand, is on 24 November 2015. The sentence was found by going back after the event and put in front of him like a record of victory: "this is what you said, look how we shot it down."
The day of the talk is not recorded in the archive; Kuytul says only "in an earlier talk of mine". What is certain is that the remark was made before the crisis. This distinction may look unimportant, but the whole weight of the claim comes from it: the sentence was uttered about something that had not yet happened, and for that reason it could afterwards be presented as a wager.
What the sentence was saying
The reading the claim rests on is this: Kuytul asserted that Turkey could not shoot down a Russian plane, and when one was shot down he was proved wrong. His own explanation rejects this reading directly:
"When I said that, did I mean 'you cannot shoot the plane down'? A plane shoots down a plane, of course it does. What did I mean? I meant that when you think about the consequences of this you will understand that you should not do it. But unfortunately this happened as well."
What was said is not a claim about technical capability. No one needs to debate whether one warplane can shoot down another. What is at issue is what will happen when that trigger is pulled.
The purpose of the talk
In the same passage the purpose is summed up in a single sentence: "let us not fall into the trap, let us drop the swaggering talk. A state is not run like this." The objection here is directed at the manner. It is held to be wrong for a state to announce a step whose consequences it will have to bear as though it were issuing a challenge in the ring; by way of example, it is recalled that not even America speaks in this language.
What the officials said after the crisis
Whether the remark was a "warning" or a "challenge" can also be seen by looking at the official statements made after the incident. In the same answer Kuytul draws attention to this contradiction: the President said on the one hand that the same thing would be done again, and stated on the other that if it had been known the plane belonged to Russia a different kind of interception would have been made and it would not have been shot down. Deputy Prime Minister Numan Kurtulmuş likewise said that if it had been known the plane was Russian it would not have been fired on. Kuytul's question is this: those who sang songs of heroism as though a war had been won when the plane was shot down, what will they say to these steps back?
How the cropping works
This claim is a good example of the cropped-clip method. When the whole text is read, what comes before and after the sentence is a chain of warnings; once the sentence is taken out of that chain, it begins to look like an assertion, even like a wager. There is no fabricated remark here — the cutting has no need to change the remark at all; it is enough to take away what surrounds it.
The answer given to the campaign
After the sentence went into circulation, heavy insults followed. Kuytul answered these with a story attributed to Jesus: when the enemies of Islam spoke harshly of him, the disciples reported it, and he said, "everyone spends out of what they have." In the whole of the answer given there is no insult directed at the other side; the objection is to how the remark was reported.
The full assessment from which the remark was taken: Kuytul's assessment of the downing of the Russian plane. The other claim produced from the same talk: the "Pro-Russian" claim.