"We Have No Direct Connection to Any Religious Community"
Fact
On the evening of 11 December 2019, during a live broadcast he joined on TV5, Alparslan Kuytul was asked which of the world's Islamic movements the Furkan Movement stands closest to. This text is compiled from that answer; it is not a response to an allegation.
The first half of the answer is a denial:
"We have nothing to do with the Salafi line. We have no direct connection with any religious community. With none of them, that is, with no religious community in the world."
The second half, however, is an acknowledgement, and the real distinction is drawn there. He mentions Hasan al-Banna, the Muslim Brotherhood and the Mawdudi movement as Ahl al-Sunnah movements that sought to awaken Muslims in the 20th century, and says openly that he benefited from their books — "We hold them all in the highest esteem" — and immediately afterwards draws the line: "but there was never any such association, nothing of the kind."
Benefiting from a book and being attached to a structure are separate things. A reading that erases this difference counts every author in a person's library as one of his connections.
The movement's own course also completes this answer. Kuytul relates that between 1980 and 1986 he held talks in homes and bookshops, and that he opened his first student house in 1986 — while he was still a university student. In other words, the structure did not begin by attaching itself to an external centre, but with a few years of house talks and a single student house.
What was the question?
On the evening of 11 December 2019, six days after his release, Alparslan Kuytul joined a live broadcast on TV5, and the question put to him was this: which of the world's Islamic movements does the Furkan Movement stand close to? The question was not ordinary curiosity: which structure the movement was attached to was also, in those same years, the subject of the case files opened against him.
What was denied: an organizational tie
The first half of the answer is short and definite:
"We have nothing to do with the Salafi line. We have no direct connection with any religious community. With none of them, that is, with no religious community in the world."
There is no evasive expression here. He adds no qualification such as "not at the moment" or "no formal tie"; the sentence is built so as to cover every religious community in the world.
What was acknowledged: benefiting from books
In the second half there is nothing he tries to conceal. He himself lists the names he read: Sayyid Qutb, Hasan al-Banna, Mawdudi, Said Hawwa. These readings began in his high-school years, in the period when he started to learn Arabic. He mentions them as Ahl al-Sunnah movements that sought to awaken Muslims in the 20th century:
"Of course we benefited from them, from their books. We hold them all in the highest esteem; but there was never any such association, nothing of the kind."
This second half shows that the answer is not an attempt at exoneration. In a period when the case files against him were open, the easiest path would have been never to mention those names and to widen the distance as far as possible. Instead, Kuytul listed by name those he had read and gave them their due, and then rejected the claim of a tie. What is denied is not the reading itself, but organizational togetherness.
Why are "benefiting" and "being attached" separate things?
The link between the two halves of the sentence is the real subject of this page. Reading a book is not joining the structure its author founded. Being influenced by an idea is not taking orders from the organization that defends that idea.
If this distinction is erased, the result is a measure that does not work: everyone with Brotherhood literature in their library counts as a member of the Brotherhood, and everyone who reads Mawdudi counts as a member of his movement. By that measure no academic, no theologian and no journalist can be cleared. The evidence for a claim of connection is not the book that was read, but the organizational relationship itself: orders, registration, money, cadre.
The movement's own beginning
The dates he gave in the same broadcast complete this answer. His childhood was spent in the mosque, in his high-school years he began to read books that set out the cause, he entered university in 1983 and graduated in civil engineering in 1988. There are two further dates in between:
- 1980-1986: the talks he gave to his friends in homes and bookshops.
- 1986: the first student house, which he opened while still a student.
The movement's starting point, then, is not the moment of attachment to an external centre, but the lessons a student gave within his own circle. Today's structure too is the continuation of that line.
The reason this question is asked
Behind the question lies a legal case file. In the operation of 30 January 2018, Kuytul was accused of being a member, at one and the same time, of four separate organizations at war with one another — the PKK, FETÖ, Daesh and al-Qaeda. In a case file where the same person can be counted as belonging both to an organization and to its enemy, it matters that the answer to the question "which movement are you attached to" is put on record. That accusation is dealt with separately on the page "The claim that he was a member of four terrorist organizations at the same time".