Gulen Charter Schools, Terrorism and Fraud on the American People by ex ...

Gulen School in Adana, Turkey RAIDED by Turkish Government

In yet another government-backed operation targeting the Gülen movement, tax inspectors from the Finance Ministry on Saturday carried out a raid with police at a private school opened by volunteers of the movement in southern province of Adana.
Çukurova Burç College, one of Adana's most successful schools, was raided and searched by four auditors and some 40 police officer early on Saturday over alleged violations of Tax Procedural Law by school administrators. Burç Schools General Manager Sultan Sözeri criticized dozens of police officers' accompanying the inspectors, saying auditors can carry out inspections at the school whenever they want. Sözeri said the raid aims to create a negative image about the school. “I know that parents who see this scene will be more willing to send us their children,” he said.
Stating that the school was inspected by Finance Ministry inspectors just one month ago, Sözeri said the search and the raid are illegal. Sözeri also underlined that the school is known for its successes in Adana. He said top scorers of the province in the most recent Transition to Higher Education examination (YGS), the first-round exam of the university entrance system, were from Çukurova Burç College.
Turkish-Islamic scholar Fethullah Gülen and the movement inspired by him have been direct targets of the government and President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan ever since a corruption probe in which some senior members of the government were implicated became public on Dec. 17 of 2013. Erdoğan, who refers to Hizmet as the “parallel state” or “structure,” accuses the movement of being behind the corruption operation.

The government, then led by Erdoğan, took action to ensure the closure of schools opened by Gülen's followers in many countries around the world. Gülen-inspired institutions and schools in Turkey are also under intense pressure from the government.
In May of last year, then-prime minister Erdoğan publicly advised supporters of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party) not to send their children to schools inspired by Gülen. “We will not even give water to them [members of Gülen movement],” he vowed.
He also ordered officials at AK Party-run municipalities to seize land and buildings belonging to the Gülen movement by any means
http://www.todayszaman.com/national_auditors-raid-gulen-inspired-private-school-in-adana-with-police_375926.html

Meanwhile other Gulen operated schools are torched or taken over

 

 

MORE PHOTOS OF ADANA RAID

 

 

Gulen and The NEW WORLD ORDER: The Gülen Movement: A New Islamic World Order? - C...

Gulen and The NEW WORLD ORDER: The Gülen Movement: A New Islamic World Order? - C...

Erdogan's Hate Speech against The Gulen Movement

Gulen Turkish School in Gambia Africa is Closed

http://allafrica.com/stories/201403181503.html

Gambian authorities have reportedly ordered the immediate closure of Yavuz Selim Anatolian School, a private school in The Gambia, which provided an "all-English education (with French and Turkish as a second language) for students from three years of age through senior secondary school".

Yavuz Selim school was established in 2010 and attended by students of various nationalities. The school provided an international school programme, and was described as "non-profit making".

"YSAS is strongly committed to developing an international and multi-cultural perspective among our students and parents... Our aim is to make an international education available to as many students as possible", stated the principal's message on the school's web site www.ysaschool.com

Our sources said the national education authorities reportedly sent a one-sentence letter to the school's principal ordering the school's immediate closure, and the principal in turn sent a letter to all parents announcing the government's decision to close the school.

The written directive to close did not mention any reason, our source further revealed.

Unlike past practice, when the ministry of Basic and Secondary Education (MoBSE) announced that a particular school in the country has been ordered for not complying with national regulations, this time MoBSE did not make this school closure public.

Meanwhile, the scores of pupils and students who attended Yavuz Selim school, with a nursery, primary school, junior and senior secondary school sections, and which remain closed for several weeks now, are staying at home, not attending school.

Observers note that the sudden closure of the school coincided with a recent boost in Gambia-Turkey relations, culminating in the recent state visit of President Yahya Jammeh to Ankara.

On that occasion, Gambian and Turkish officials signed a number of cooperation agreements in the fields of health, defence, taxation, culture, sports, education and security cooperation.

Although there is no evidence linking it to the closure of the school in The Gambia, observers have called attention to recent events in Turkey, where the parliament passed a new law to shut down private preparatory schools, which are attended by millions of students.

According to news reports, a deadline of 1 September 2015 was set to close the schools, many of which are run by the movement of an influential US-based Muslim cleric, Fetullah Gulen, who prime minister Recep Tayyib Erdogan accuses of running a covert campaign to topple his government.

The schools are said to be a major source of income and influence for the movement.

 

Turkey passes controversial law to shut down Gulen schools

Gulen Schools in Turkey closed as ordered by the Turkish Parliament

ANKARA // Turkey’s parliament has passed a bill to close down thousands of private schools, many of which are run by an influential Muslim cleric embroiled in a bitter feud with the government.

The move is the latest blow struck in a rivalry between prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his former ally Fethullah Gulen which has seen the Turkish government entangled in a graft scandal.

On Friday, lawmakers in the 550-seat house voted 226 for and 22 against the bill which sets September 1, 2015 as the deadline to shut down the network of schools.

Around 4,000 private schools in Turkey are run by Mr Gulen, and provide a major source of income for his Hizmet (Service) movement, which describes itself as a global, social and cultural movement inspired by Islamic ideals.

Tensions have long simmered between Mr Erdogan and Mr Gulen, who once worked hand-in-hand as the conservative pro-business middle class rose at the expense of the military and former secular elite.

But they reached a breaking point in November when the government first floated the idea of shutting down the schools, which aims to help students prepare for high school and university.

Mr Erdogan said at the time he wanted to abolish an “illegal” and unfair education system which he charged turned children into “competition horses”.

“Those who benefit from these courses are the kids of rich families in big cities,” said the Turkish premier, who has tried to burnish an image as a man of the people during his term in office.

In mid-December dozens of Mr Erdogan’s allies were detained in police raids on allegations of bribery in construction projects, gold smuggling and illicit dealings with Iran.

Mr Erdogan accused so-called Gulenists implanted in Turkey’s police and judiciary of instigating the corruption probe in a bid to undermine his government ahead of local elections in March and presidential elections in August.

He retaliated by sacking hundreds of police and prosecutors believed to be linked to the movement run by Mr Gulen, who lives in self-imposed exile in the United States.

A Turkish court on Friday released the last five suspects detained in the corruption probe, including the sons of two former ministers.

However the corruption crisis, which dragged down four ministers and prompted a cabinet shake-up, has posed the most serious challenge to Mr Erdogan’s Islamic-rooted government since it came to power in 2002.

The controversy has widened to implicate Mr Erdogan himself, after recordings were leaked online last week in which the premier can allegedly be heard discussing hiding large sums of cash and conspiring to extort a bribe from a business associate.

The government has said the phone recordings are “fabricated”.

Government has also accused Gulenists of wiretapping thousands of influential people -- including the prime minister, the spy chief and journalists.

At an election rally on Saturday, Mr Erdogan blamed Mr Gulen loyalists for “espionage” and “blackmail” and threatened that they would pay a “heavy price”.

“Confidential and strategic conversations are being wiretapped,” he said.

Observers say the schools law is the latest move by the government to strike back at Gulen’s Hizmet network.

Hizmet risks losing millions of dollars in revenue once the Turkish establishments, which offer education to supplement normal schooling, are closed down.

Erdogan’s government has also recently pushed through legislation tightening state control over the Internet and the judiciary, generating criticism at home and abroad and raising questions about the state of democracy in Turkey.

Gulen, who has been living in the United States since 1999 to escape charges of plotting against the secular state by the then-government, has denied any involvement in the corruption probe.

The Hizmet movement also runs some 500 private schools around the world.

Read more: http://www.thenational.ae/world/turkey/turkish-parliament-votes-to-close-gulen-schools#ixzz2vESnaQAT
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More coverage here

http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2014/03/01/352802/turkey-passes-law-to-close-gulen-school

 

Gulen Movement by Carnegie Endowment, from social activism and politics

Since its election in 2002, the ruling Turkish Justice and Development Party (AKP), under the leadership of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, has transformed Turkey. The reforms initiated by this conservative government with Islamic roots have amounted to a passive revolution—they have profoundly altered Turkish society, modernized its institutions, and strengthened its economy, which is now the sixteenth-largest in the world in terms of GDP.

 

Yet it would be a mistake to attribute the many successes that have enhanced Turkey’s role as a major regional and international player to AKP leadership alone. Erdoğan’s government has enjoyed support from a number of political organizations as well as from influential religious and social forces within Turkey. The most invaluable, but also the hardest to assess, is a movement that plays a fundamental role in Turkey’s social and religious life: the Gülen movement of Fethullah Gülen, referred to by the terms cemaat or hizmet.

The AKP and the Gülen movement established an alliance in 2002 based on a common desire to push back the central role of the military in the country and create a new, more conservative, and more Muslim Turkey. Each brought different skills to the task—Erdoğan and his AKP colleagues were experienced in political activism and electoral politics, while the Gülen movement used education and social activism to promote its objectives. This alliance was not without disagreements, but until recently common interests outweighed differences.

During the past few months, however, tensions have deepened between Erdoğan and the Gülenists in the realms of both domestic and foreign policy, causing speculation that the alliance is headed for a fundamental break. There can be no doubt that rifts have emerged over a variety of issues, from the rising power of the Gülen movement to the increasingly authoritarian actions of the prime minister. But talk of a complete break may well be premature.

The Gülen Movement

Fethullah Gülen emerged as a religious authority in Turkey in the 1970s, and little by little he became the spiritual leader of a vast community that now boasts an estimated 3 million sympathizers. Gülen, who moved to the United States in 1999, encourages his disciples to become modern, moderate Muslims. An adherent of free markets, he champions the Islamic faith and the spirit of capitalism. He is also a nationalist, seeking to boost Turkey’s influence and prestige abroad.

Gülen relies heavily on education to transmit his ideas, and he has formed a network of hundreds of schools and businesses worldwide. This network is active on every continent, including in the United States, where his sympathizers run approximately 130 charter schools, mainly in Texas.

He focuses his efforts on educating new generations and promoting the emergence of elites who are simultaneously pious, modern, patriotic, committed to globalization, and comfortable with economic success. Like the Jesuits and other missionaries who trained Turkey’s republican, Kemalist elites to value secularism and follow a Western path through the schools they founded at the end of the Ottoman Empire, Gülen aspires to use education to help forge new generation of Anatolian, conservative elites (or counterelites) that might play a key role in creating a modern, more openly Islamic Turkey.

For this reason, Gülenists have always given great importance to the training of elites. As far back as 1998, a study on relations between Turkey and the Turkic republics of Central Asia, where Gülen’s schools represented the best of Turkish policy in the region, showed that Central Asian students who were trained at Turkish police academies returned to Central Asia very familiar with Gülen’s religious and social ideas.

After emerging from Gülen’s schools, many of these elites have assumed key positions within the Turkish administration. Gülen’s disciples are influential in key institutional bureaucracies and the media. Many hold important positions in the state apparatus, the judiciary, the educational system, and key sectors of the Turkish economy. While the movement’s representatives do not deny the presence of sympathizers within state structures, they insist that this is not the result of any strategy to infiltrate the state apparatus and instead point to the fact that these educated individuals have reached high ranks in the civil service thanks to their work ethic and perseverance.

Political Influence

Indeed, the Gülen movement is quick to emphasize that it is essentially religious and social, not political. In practice, however, Gülen’s community is interested in politics. But it must refrain from coming across as partisan, which could divide its members, many of whom are attracted to Gülen’s religious discourse rather than to his ideas and political initiatives.

Still, over time the presence of Gülen’s disciples in the state apparatus has given the movement a significant amount of political influence, a development that may have contributed to the AKP’s desire to form an alliance. After coming to power, the AKP offered Gülen’s community its political and, especially, its symbolic backing, publicly supporting his educational initiatives in Turkey and abroad. In exchange, the AKP benefited from the social connectedness of Gülen’s movement and from the support of the media outlets with which the movement enjoys a close relationship.

And the alliance was based on more than just pragmatic concerns. The AKP and the Gülen movement also share the same social base—the rising Anatolian middle classes, which are morally conservative, economically market-oriented, and open to globalization. In addition, the religious conservatism of the AKP and the Gülen movement is directed against a common enemy: the Turkish army and the bureaucracy, which are dominated by the Kemalist intelligentsia. This has created an unwritten pact between the two groups, bolstering their complementarity.

Gülenists have been uncharacteristically active in the public debate on a new Turkish constitution, advocating for a political system that is more parliamentarian than presidential. The movement has also organized conferences and discussions in Turkey and abroad through its prestigious Abant Platform, which aims to strengthen democracy through dialogue.

Growing Tensions

For nearly ten years, the alliance between the AKP and the Gülen movement—natural and spontaneous, for the most part—has functioned well, but it is now showing increasing fragility, exacerbated by changes in the conditions and the sociopolitical context that initially gave rise to it. Indeed, the raison d’être for this alliance—the vital need for both groups to protect themselves against the Kemalist apparatus, embodied in particular by the army—is gradually disappearing. With support from the Gülenists, the ruling AKP has considerably reduced the role and power of the army, which no longer enjoys the political prerogatives that made it even recently the true power in the country. A host of other factors have also contributed to growing tensions, and the diametrically opposed temperaments of the two leaders—Erdoğan is impetuous and hot-tempered, and Gülen is prophetically calm—do not facilitate dialogue.

The first rift between the AKP and the Gülen movement was in the foreign policy arena. As prime minister, Erdoğan has cooled relations between Turkey and Israel for political, strategic, and ideological reasons. A crisis broke out between the two countries in May 2010 when a Turkish relief organization attempted to send a flotilla of humanitarian aid to Gaza in defiance of the Israeli government’s blockade of the Gaza Strip. The Israeli navy boarded several ships of the flotilla, including the Turkish MV Mavi Marmara, and faced resistance from the activists aboard. Nine activists, including eight Turkish nationals, were killed.

Gülen publicly disapproved of the Turkish NGO’s initiative to break the Israeli blockade. He criticized the Turkish government for supporting it and distanced himself from the prime minister’s anti-Israel rhetoric. Indeed, Gülen’s community has always refrained from strongly criticizing Israel, in part because doing so would run counter to the ecumenical, interreligious discourse that has contributed to the movement’s global success. This stance also reflects the fact that the Gülen movement has a strong presence in the United States, where it enjoys backing from many friends of Israel, and this powerful American support reinforces its influence.

Gülen’s disapproval may also reflect the fact that the NGO that organized the flotilla, the Foundation for Human Rights and Freedoms and Humanitarian Relief, was close to the AKP and to some extent in competition with the Gülen movement’s own activities in the social sector.

On the domestic front, the two organizations have begun to clash with more frequency. The Turkish media report that the AKP government is increasingly annoyed and concerned that its decisionmaking power and sovereignty are being challenged by the growing influence of Gülen’s community on all government structures as well as on the police, judiciary, and public education system. But unlike the secular opposition, which responds vehemently to what the media call the infiltration of state structures by Gülen’s disciples, the AKP has reacted with restraint to avoid publicizing the emerging rivalry at the heart of the state.

READ ENTIRE ARTICLE HERE AT THE CARNEGIE ENDOWMENT

http://carnegieendowment.org/2013/10/24/turkey-s-g%C3%BClen-movement-between-social-activism-and-politics/gr8q

 

Gulen the CIA lapdog behind Erdogan's AKP Party.

Gulen the tail that wags the dog in Turkey (with the help of America's CIA)