Who Does He Mean by "Deep Forces"?
Fact
This text is compiled from two interviews with Alparslan Kuytul, who was released on 5 December 2019 after the operation of 30 January 2018 and the arrest of 8 February 2018: with Gazete Duvar on 10 December 2019, and with TV5 on 11 December 2019. It is not an answer to a claim; it conveys a term he frequently uses, in his own description of it.
When Kuytul says "deep state," he is not speaking of some unnamed power; he describes whom he means:
"Let me not say secular; it is those who practise 'laicism' who have turned the matter into hostility toward Islam. I am not saying this about everyone who defends secularism. These are influential dominant forces."
What he means is not a belief or a political preference, but a milieu that dominates the state bureaucracy and turns secularism into opposition to Islam. The qualification in the middle of the sentence matters: it does not cover everyone who defends secularism.
He also separates this milieu from the government. The grievance and the demand of the two are not the same:
"The government wants those who oppose it to be finished off, but the state that dominates the bureaucracy wants all of them finished off."
He reads his own case, too, as the meeting point of these two headings: one side was disturbed by the criticisms he directed at the government, the other by the activity itself.
His answer to the objection that the term is used to whitewash those in power is short: "I have no intention of whitewashing them. That is already visible. I am also speaking of those who are not visible."
His prediction follows from this. In the sentence he addressed to the AK Parti years ago: "They are having you cut the branch you sit on." In his view, once Islamic activities have been finished off, the turn will come to the party that says it rests on that base.
Where and when was this text spoken?
Alparslan Kuytul was arrested on 8 February 2018 following the operation of 30 January 2018, and released on 5 December 2019. The words on this page belong to the period immediately after his release. The description of the term comes from the Gazete Duvar interview of 10 December 2019, while the section on the prediction is taken from the live TV5 broadcast he joined on the evening of 11 December 2019. The video on this page is that broadcast in full; the passage containing the description is not in the video but in the written interview.
Where does the term appear?
When Kuytul lists the three reasons he sees behind his arrest, he mentions this term in second place: the criticisms he directed at the government, his speaking of the plans of the deep state, and, as the reason he considers most important, the fact that he was expounding tawhid. These three items themselves are addressed on the page "Why was I arrested? The three answers he gave himself"; the subject here is what the term in the second item means.
Whom does the term cover, and whom does it not?
Kuytul's description consists of a two-sentence definition and one qualification:
"In fact, deep forces dominate the country. Let me not say secular; it is those who practise 'laicism' who have turned the matter into hostility toward Islam. I am not saying this about everyone who defends secularism."
The last sentence must not be skipped. What is meant is not secularism, but the bureaucratic milieu that turns secularism into a programme of opposition to religion. Kuytul attaches a historical rationale to this as well: when a cause is first put forward, the first to oppose it have been the dominant forces and the office-holders who benefit from the existing order.
Two separate grievances
The most distinctive aspect of the text is that it does not confuse the two sides with each other:
"I came face to face with two forces. They united against me. One is the AKP side, the other the deep forces that dominate the state, the bureaucracy… The AKP side is disturbed by my criticising the government. The other side is disturbed by my activities, my statements and by the growth in our numbers."
The difference between them appears more sharply in another sentence from the same interview: while the government wants those who oppose it to be finished off, the state that dominates the bureaucracy wants all of them finished off. In other words, the complaint of the first is opposition, that of the second is the activity itself.
The scope is not only the religious communities
In the TV5 broadcast he outlines the scope of the pressure coming from this second side. In his view the target of restriction does not end with the religious communities: teachers not attached to any community, intellectuals and journalists are the subject of the same grievance.
"A certain power in fact finds all Islamic activity in Turkey too much. It even finds freedom too much."
He places his own victimhood here as well: he regards the fact that the right of assembly and demonstration, expressly granted by the laws, has in practice become impossible to exercise as the result of this attitude of "finding it too much".
Is this whitewashing those in power?
In the interview this objection is put to him directly: does pointing to an invisible power not mean overlooking the responsibility of those who hold office? His answer is short:
"I have no intention of whitewashing them. That is already visible. I am also speaking of those who are not visible."
What shows this to be consistent is the harshness of the criticisms he directed at the government in the same period — beginning with the support given to the invasion of Iraq in 2003. The history of these criticisms is addressed on the page the claim that "He criticises the government only over his own victimhood".
"They are having you cut the branch you sit on"
The sentence that closes the text is a warning he addressed to the AK Parti years ago:
"You are cutting the branch you sit on. They are having you cut the branch you sit on. First they will finish off the religious communities, they will destroy your base, and after that the turn will come to you."
On TV5 he expands on this: in his view this team has no base and no power of its own; what it has are files and the pressure built with them. That is why they want the government to stay strong for a while — until their own programme is complete.
This section is not a document but a prediction; and the page conveys it as a prediction. The part that rests on evidence is his own description of whom the term covers and whom it does not. The presentation of criticism of the government as hostility is a separate heading: the claim that "He is hostile to the AK Parti government".