Among the mounting headaches for Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan –
in Washington this week for a visit that notably does not include a
formal sitdown with President Obama – is a 74-year-old Muslim cleric
quietly living on a private compound in the Pocono Mountains of
Pennsylvania.
Fethullah Gulen, a one-time Erdogan ally, is the head
of a faith-based social movement that boasts a global following, has
deep roots in Turkish society, and cultivates notable influence in the
U.S. education through a network of roughly 150 secular charter schools.
But a nasty split between the two over Erdogan’s
years-long crackdown on domestic dissent and Turkey’s once-open media
landscape has now spread to the United States, and threatens to further
destabilize an already frayed alliance.
“It is Erdogan’s way of fighting the corruption without obviously confronting the issue of corruption.”
- Professor Henri Barkey, expert on Turkey
More than 2,000 Gulen supporters have been arrested
in Turkey on various charges since the 2013 split, though many were
later released. And Turkish authorities recently seized control of one
of Turkey’s largest newspapers, Zaman, which was associated with Gulen.
But what’s relatively new to many Americans only now
hearing about Gulen is a high-profile, multimillion-dollar public
relations and legal effort by the Erdogan government to extradite him to
Turkey, and raise myriad questions about the propriety of the charter
schools.
“This is a really dangerous group,” charged Robert
Amsterdam, a lawyer whose firm Erdogan hired to launch an international
investigation of the Gulen organization - particularly its business and
political dealings in the U.S. “When it comes to these charter schools
and Gulen, nothing is transparent.”
Gulen cloisters himself on the grounds of an Islamic
retreat owned by Turkish Americans in Saylorsburg, Pa., and rarely gives
interviews to news media. But his sermons appear online. He preaches
what many consider a moderate form of Islam. And he has regularly and
stridently condemned jihadist terror attacks –
much more so than Erdogan, say the president’s critics – and typically advocates interfaith dialogue.
Gulen’s Hizmet movment -- meaning “service” in
Turkish -- is marked by business savvy and a successful push to build
political connections. The movement is believed to be worth billions of
dollars.
Troubling statements from Turkey's Erdogan
“This is not a proselytizing movement. This is not a
glory-of-Islam movement. This is a glory-of-the-Gulen-movement
movement,” said Joshua Hendrick, an associate professor of sociology and
global studies at Loyola University of Maryland who wrote a book about
Hizmet.
Hendrick disputed Amsterdam’s argument the
organization is dangerous. But in Erdogan’s view, Gulen is an arch-enemy
of the state, whose followers represent a seditious “parallel state”
within Turkey.
Gulen is specifically accused of scheming to have his
followers infiltrate the Turkish government for the purpose of
overthrowing Erdogan’s ruling Justice and Development Party, known by
its Turkish acronym as the AKP. Gulen also faces espionage charges, and
two trials are now being held in absentia.
“Those accusations are laughable; they have no
evidence,” said Y. Alp Aslandogan, executive director of the Alliance
for Shared Values, a New York-based organization that promotes Gulen’s
teachings.
Several scholars in the U.S. interviewed by
FoxNews.com also defended Gulen and criticized the Turkish prosecution
of him, citing Erdogan’s aggressive crackdown.
“There is no evidence that I am aware of to support
the idea that the movement is at all violent or terroristic,” Zeki
Saritoprak, professor of Islamic studies at John Carroll University in
Ohio, told Fox News. “Allegations to the contrary are absurd.”
Another scholar, A. Kadir Yildirim, of Rice
University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy, agreed. “All opposition
groups, including the Gulen Movement, are being targeted by President
Erdogan,” he said, listing Kurds, non-Muslim minorities and liberals as
other victims of Erdogan’s autocratic tilt.
Professor Henri Barkey, director of the Middle East
Program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and a
longtime expert on Turkey, said Gulen supporters have been scapegoated
to draw attention from Turkey’s complex domestic and foreign policy
problems -- which range from increased internal unrest and a Kurdish
insurgency to Russia’s menacing influence in Syria and Turkey’s fraying
alliance with the U.S. over – among other factors -- the Obama
administration’s support for Kurdish militias in the battle against
ISIS.
“It is convenient for the government to blame the
Gulenists for everything,” Barkey said. “It is Erdogan’s way of fighting
the corruption without obviously confronting the issue of corruption.”
One scholar argued for a more careful approach.
Abraham Wagner, a lecturer at Columbia Law School and a board member at
the Center for Advanced Studies on Terrorism, said the next U.S.
administration should pay close attention to Hizmet activities in
America.
“They are trying to undermine the (Turkish)
government … We have to be aware of what they are and how they are
operating,” he said. “It’s not an open and shut case. What I am urging
is, let’s take a closer look at what they are doing.”
Some have done just that. A number of
Gulen-affiliated schools have been investigated over accusations that
include mismanagement of public funds and possible visa fraud. Amsterdam
alleges the network has a history of receiving a disproportionate share
of H-1B visas -- temporary non-immigrant work visas -- that allow
foreign teachers to work in the U.S. He said Gulen’s U.S. charter
network, however loosely organized, generates massive profits, and that
“a percentage of that is going back to Turkey” and being used to foment
“instability.”
Barkey said Gulen-affiliated charters aren’t
necessarily engaging in illegality, but they “skirt good practices or
common sense sometimes.” He said he was infuriated when he saw a recent
report on the CBS program “60 Minutes” about Gulen charters that
highlighted one example of a school bringing a Turkish national to the
U.S. to teach English.
“You are going to tell me that a Turk, who is going
to speak with an accent, is going to teach English to kids in the U.S.?”
Barkey asked.
The Chicago Sun-Times also reported last year that
the Justice Department launched an investigation into alleged misuse of
federal grant money at Concept Schools, a Gulen-linked network of some
30 charters in Illinois and five other states. Federal officials did not
respond to multiple inquiries from FoxNews.com, but Concept management
said, through a spokeswoman, they “continue to cooperate with
authorities.” To date, no one affiliated with a Gulen charter has been
convicted of any criminal activity.
Amsterdam and other Hizmet critics also accused some Gulen-linked charters of targeting selected students to proselytize.
“Our investigation has uncovered that … there is a
proselytizing campaign where these Turkish teachers, we are told,
actually target youths in these schools -- not a lot, maybe four or five
per class -- to bring them into the movement,” Amsterdam said.
When asked, Amsterdam, who reiterated many of the
charges in a news conference in Washington Thursday, would not
immediately provide specifics.
That charge, too, was met with skepticism by those
who note Gulen schools are often highly regarded and more focused on
science and technology instruction.
“Worldwide, to my knowledge, there has been no
credible evidence of religious indoctrination at any school established
or run by Hizmet sympathizers,” said Saritoprak.
Amsterdam vows his investigation is far from over.
His efforts have thus far produced one court case -- a pending civil
suit in U.S. District Court in Pennsylvania -- which alleges Gulen used a
2009 sermon to signal his followers in law enforcement in Turkey to
falsely arrest three political opponents.
Gulen’s lawyer in that case, Michael Miller, argues
U.S. law does not apply, and called it “an abuse of the U.S. courts to
try to initiate a lawsuit like this as part of a global campaign, a
political campaign, to harass Mr. Gulen.”
Meanwhile, Aslandogan and other Hizmet supporters
want Americans to see through these anti-Gulen efforts, and recognize
this as an international political fight led by the increasingly
autocratic Erdogan.
“We are talking about a person with dictatorial
ambitions in Turkey, and he is taking his battles to American shores,”
Aslandogan said.
