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| Next we will explore the Turkish schools and businesses that are opening in Iraq Seems that the invasion of Iraq by the USA has resulted in business opportunities for Turkey WEB SITE LAUNCHED FOR WORLDWIDE ARTICLES ON THE GULEN MOVEMENT PLEASE SUBMIT STORIES FROM YOUR COUNTRY. |
Gulen Schools Worldwide
Restore the Ottoman Caliphate. Disclaimer: if some videos are down this is the result of Gulen censorship which filed a fake copyright infringement to UTUBE.
Sunday, February 27, 2011
Gulen Movement mentioned in Foreign Media, web site launched
Thursday, February 24, 2011
Gulen's Turkish HIBs School in Vietnam- another school the same story "Started by Turkish Businessmen"
The new Gulen Turkish School In Vietnam is called the Horizon International Bilingual School. It is the “same” story …blah blah- Turkish businessmen in Vietnam decided to give back to their community by opening a school, the Olympiads start, the Turkish Clubs and Free trips to Turkey. Wine and dine the politicians (as in this photo) and then move to push for a new school.
It is so predictable and consistent along with the secrets of their true agenda and allegiance to Turkey and Gulen. Even the name of this school is the same as the Gulen Sister schools in Ohio called Horizon Science Academies.
The Website of Horizon International Bilingual School (HIBS) in Vietnam
Turkey and Vietnam sign MOU to bolster bilateral ties.
Deputy Prime Minister Bülent Arınç, who embarked on a Southeast Asian tour last weekend, signed a memorandum of understanding Vu (MoU) with Vietnam’s Minister of Trade and Industry V Huy Hoàng in Hanoi on Wednesday. |
Arınç and Hoang signed the agreement at the close of the fifth meeting of the Turkey-Vietnam Joint Economic and Trade Committee (KEK) in the Vietnamese capital. Speaking after the signing ceremony, Arınç said the MoU would contribute to the friendship between the two countries as well as strengthen their economic ties. He also noted that economic relations between Turkey and Vietnam were sustainable and full of opportunities for progress. The Vietnamese minister also expressed the belief that the results of the KEK meeting, one of which was the signed agreement, would further the relations between the two countries. He also expressed the will to work more actively to make the best out of the economic potential that currently exists between Turkey and Vietnam. Following the meeting, Arınç attended the inauguration of the Horizon International Bilingual School opened by Turkish education volunteers in Hanoi. Delivering a speech during the inauguration ceremony, Arınç said the school would provide high-quality education to the youth of Vietnam. Inspired by the teachings of the widely respected Islamic scholar Fethullah Gülen, Turkish volunteers, teachers and businesspeople, have opened educational institutions from kindergartens to universities in over 100 countries around the world since the early ‘90s. The local school forgot to tell the Vietnamese officials that Gulen has not formal education past the 5th grade and is NOT or ever will be a "scholar" of any sort. |
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| The MoU was signed by Deputy PM Arınç and Vietnam’s Minister of Trade and Industry Hoang in Hanoi on Wednesday. |
Gulen- Will the real Fethullah Gulen aka "Islamic Imam Muhammed Fethullah Gulen" please stand up
The real Fethullah Gülen
Fethullah Gülen and his beliefs represent nothing new in Islamic thought. Instead, as the hijacking of the Prospect poll shows, Gülenism is essentially a cult
Fethullah Gülen, the Turkish Muslim ideologue who claims to find inspiration in Islamic mysticism (Sufism), has had a busy summer. Following the hijacking by his many admirers of the Prospect/Foreign Policy global public intellectuals poll, on 24th June he was acquitted by the Turkish judiciary of charges of fundamentalism and terrorism. Then, some Turkish media reported that Gülen has been denied a “green card” for permanent immigrant status in the US and faces deportation.
Rumours had circulated for some months that Gülen, who resided for several years, while ill, in Pennsylvania, had already returned to Turkey following the election of the AK (Justice and Development) party, with which he is loosely connected. But the reports about Gülen’s immigration case were false. No such decision has been made in the US, and no resolution of his status is expected in the short term. The lesson of this latest item, for opponents of Gülen, is that wherever he goes, media manipulation and disinformation follow.
Arguments for Fethullah Gülen are typically made with the belief that westerners can be fooled into thinking that Gülen and his alleged Sufism represent some profound breakthroughs in Islamic thought, when in fact they do not. Still, the effort often succeeds. Gülen was described by Tom Nuttall in his analysis of the poll results as “a new kind of intellectual— one whose influence is expressed through a personal network, aided by the internet, rather than publications or institutions.” But the same could have been said, before the arrival of the internet, of the “new kind of religion” called Scientology, invented by L Ron Hubbard.
The Gülen movement has also been praised for establishing a business-oriented daily, Zaman (Today) with a large circulation and numerous international editions. But the non-Turkish incarnations of Zaman have included publications issued in Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, benighted ex-Soviet dictatorships, the contents of which are identical in spirit with those of newsless sheets issued by the local rulers—crazies in Turkmenistan and bloodthirsty neo-Stalinists in Uzbekistan.
Gülen followers like to present him as a pioneer in interfaith dialogue, even a kind of Islamic pope or Dalai Lama. But Muslim interfaith encounters with Jews and Christians are rather old news. The commandment of respectful relations between Muslims and non-Muslims appears in the Koran, which honors the People of the Book, originally Jews, Christians, and a mysterious faith known as the Sabaeans, but later extended by Sunni Muslims to include Zoroastrians and Hindus.
There is also nothing new in Gülenist attempts to resolve conflicts between faith and reason. These issues have been discussed in Islam for a millennium, with much greater eloquence, and are basic to Islamic theology. Likewise, there is nothing new in the Gülenist enthusiasm for technology. Radical Islamists like the Egyptian Sayyid Qutb called on the Muslims to embrace western scientific advances, and al Qaeda websites are far more ingenious and probably more successful than their anti-radical and official counterparts.
Further, there is nothing new in the designation of Gülenist belief as “Islam lite.” If this rather offensive term has any meaning, it would presumably refer to moderate Islam, which has existed as a stream within the religion since the Koran (2:143) defined Muslims as a “community of moderation.” Moderate Islam was spelled out in the 4th Islamic century by theologian Imam al-Tahawi, as follows: “Islam lies between excess and falling short, between comparing God with other aspects of creation and denying God’s attributes, between fatalism and defiance of God’s will, between certainty and despair.” Muslims did not have to wait for the coming of the secularists or Islamists like Fethullah Gülen to find such a doctrine of faith.
There was something new and disturbing, and perhaps unintentionally revealing, in the Gülenist apologia offered by Ehsan Masood (Prospect, July 2008). The author referred to the followers of Gülen as “converts.” The use of this word is bizarre. Presumably, Gülenists are already Muslims. They should not need to convert to Islam again. (This practice is, however, considered necessary by the ultra-fundamentalist Wahhabi sect based in Saudi Arabia. Sunnis who become Shia Muslims are also said to undergo a “conversion.”) But perhaps Gülen has created not only a cult, as many observers including myself believe, or even a new Muslim sect, but imagines he can found a new religion based on worship of himself.
The Gülen movement’s manipulation of the Prospect/Foreign Policy poll speaks for itself. Respected Muslim intellectuals will view this affair with contempt.
MANY FACES OF ISLAMIC IMAM MUHAMMED FETHULLAH GULEN
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
Gulen Movement "How to Destroy a Country for Dummies"
Oxford Analytica versus Turkish democracy | |
| Last week the US ambassador to Turkey created havoc when he directly commented on a legal case and declared that he was confused about freedom of the press in Turkey. The case in point concerns the infamous Ergenekon terrorist organization and journalist Soner Yalçın, who has been charged for being a member of the organization. | |
| Based on the evidence presented to it, a court has jailed Mr. Yalçın pending trial. I am sure that within a few months we will able to read the indictment and evaluate for ourselves if he is in prison for his journalistic activities or if journalism was a cover for his illegal activities. But some in Turkey, including the US ambassador, have been quick to claim that Mr. Yalçın is innocent and that the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) and the Gülen movement have been unjustly trying to silence the opposition. I agree that this is a very complicated case that will take at least a few years to resolve. But common sense tells us that neither the Gülen movement nor the AK Party need to silence their opponents. Based on several surveys, it seems that the AK Party is likely to win a third consecutive election this June with an expected landslide of around 50 percent of the vote, while the main opposition party may only get 25-30 percent. And this will happen despite the activities of the opposition of these so-called journalists. Because of their provocative journalism, such as claims that Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and President Abdullah Gül are secretly pushing an Islamist agenda and the Gülen movement is a CIA organization, the people have been increasingly supportive of the party and the movement. Why would they risk their international reputation by trying to silence this already ineffective and ironically “supportive” opposition? The claims about the movement especially are simply funny. The movement operates in more than 130 countries with a discourse of tolerance and it is well aware that in the global village, everybody will learn about their alleged “intolerant” and “oppressive” activities. A case in point is an Oxford Analytica report on Feb. 4 titled “Gülen movement faces more global scrutiny.” Oxford Analytica claims that the movement’s “image in Turkey, its country of origin, differs from the one it presents to the outside world.” But, first of all, whose image projection is this? Not only the movement but an overwhelming majority in Turkey see the Ergenekon case as part of democratization and, in the Ergenekon indictments, there are countless pieces of evidence showing that many of those being tried by the court were involved in anti-democratic terrorist activities. Instead of looking at these details and the whole picture, the defenders of the imprisoned want us to look at a few mistakes in the tens of thousands of indictment pages as if these mistakes would simply eradicate the substantial evidence against the coup-plotters and assassins. Instead of giving Ergenekon suspects a carte blanche and saying that the movement’s support of “the proceedings of the Ergenekon trials, in spite of flaws and inconsistencies in the indictments, has raised doubts about the movement’s attachment to the rule of law,” why doesn’t the Oxford Analytica give us a balanced picture of what really is going on in Turkey and inform its readers that not only the AK Party or the movement but also many non-Muslim Turks, socialists, liberals in Turkey, Eurocrats, many European politicians and so on also support the Ergenekon case? Are these all secret movement participants or naïve AK Party supporters? It seems that Oxford Analytica has a final verdict on the Ergenekon case and knows very well that it is against the law and sees that supporting the case makes one’s attachment to the rule of law dubious. Second, I do not see why being involved in one’s home country in a democratization fight against some powers that in the past have staged several coups, tortured tens of thousands of people and imprisoned hundreds of thousands of people should contradict one’s intercultural dialogue activities. Do dialogue and tolerance simply mean that one should turn a blind eye to one’s prospective murderers? Instead of talking about rumors, Oxford Analytica should tell us what kind of illegal activities these movement participants, its media outlets and so on have been perpetrating. Instead, what we read is that the movement’s schools have been closed down in Uzbekistan and Russia, as if this proves the so-called controversial nature of the movement.Moreover, on reading the Oxford Analytica piece on the Dutch case, one would think that the Dutch authorities caught the movement red-handed. The movement has been a victim of the fight between the government and increasingly Islamophobic opposition in the Netherlands. But a recent parliamentary report about the movement underlined that there is nothing wrong with the movement. This is a major incident; however, Oxford Analytica curiously does not mention the report, giving only one side of the story, as it does in the Turkish case. Oxford Analytica also puts that “Like Opus Dei and the freemasons, the movement does not publish membership rolls or a budget. Nor does it list its activities in the two main fields where it is engaged -- education and the media.” But this is an unjustified attack against the movement. First of all, it does not have a central body or hierarchical organization; it is composed of informal loose networks. Second, the affiliated organizations of the movement never hide themselves. Several academic studies simply provide names of the organizations. The content of their websites simply resemble each other and anyone can spot that they are affiliated with the movement. The UK has been ostensibly supportive of Turkey’s entry into the EU, but so far I have not observed the same enthusiasm from the British authorities and politicians with regards to democratization in Turkey. They simply followed a sort of neocon or Pentagonian, militaristic friendly line on this, maybe hoping that one day authoritarian Kemalists with whom doing business was simpler will return to power. Sweet dreams. One would expect stronger support for Turkish democracy, but instead we read confusing and fictitious narratives from British think tanks. The majority of Turks would not be surprised. | |
From Gulen's own Today's Zaman propagandist online controlled journalism.
| . | |
| is likely to win a third consecutive election this June with an expected landslide of around 50 percent of the vote, while the main opposition party may only get 25-30 percent. And this will happen despite the activities of the opposition of these so-called journalists. Because of their provocative journalism, such as claims that Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and President Abdullah Gül are secretly pushing an Islamist agenda and the Gülen movement is a CIA organization, the people have been increasingly supportive of the party and the movement. Why would they risk their international reputation by trying to silence this already ineffective and ironically “supportive” opposition? The claims about the movement especially are simply funny. The movement operates in more than 130 countries with a discourse of tolerance and it is well aware that in the global village, everybody will learn about their alleged “intolerant” and “oppressive” activities. A case in point is an Oxford Analytica report on Feb. 4 titled “Gülen movement faces more global scrutiny.” Oxford Analytica claims that the movement’s “image in Turkey, its country of origin, differs from the one it presents to the outside world.” But, first of all, whose image projection is this? Not only the movement but an overwhelming majority in Turkey see the Ergenekon case as part of democratization and, in the Ergenekon indictments, there are countless pieces of evidence showing that many of those being tried by the court were involved in anti-democratic terrorist activities. Instead of looking at these details and the whole picture, the defenders of the imprisoned want us to look at a few mistakes in the tens of thousands of indictment pages as if these mistakes would simply eradicate the substantial evidence against the coup-plotters and assassins. Instead of giving Ergenekon suspects a carte blanche and saying that the movement’s support of “the proceedings of the Ergenekon trials, in spite of flaws and inconsistencies in the indictments, has raised doubts about the movement’s attachment to the rule of law,” why doesn’t the Oxford Analytica give us a balanced picture of what really is going on in Turkey and inform its readers that not only the AK Party or the movement but also many non-Muslim Turks, socialists, liberals in Turkey, Eurocrats, many European politicians and so on also support the Ergenekon case? Are these all secret movement participants or naïve AK Party supporters? It seems that Oxford Analytica has a final verdict on the Ergenekon case and knows very well that it is against the law and sees that supporting the case makes one’s attachment to the rule of law dubious. Second, I do not see why being involved in one’s home country in a democratization fight against some powers that in the past have staged several coups, tortured tens of thousands of people and imprisoned hundreds of thousands of people should contradict one’s intercultural dialogue activities. Do dialogue and tolerance simply mean that one should turn a blind eye to one’s prospective murderers? Instead of talking about rumors, Oxford Analytica should tell us what kind of illegal activities these movement participants, its media outlets and so on have been perpetrating. Instead, what we read is that the movement’s schools have been closed down in Uzbekistan and Russia, as if this proves the so-called controversial nature of the movement. Moreover, on reading the Oxford Analytica piece on the Dutch case, one would think that the Dutch authorities caught the movement red-handed. The movement has been a victim of the fight between the government and increasingly Islamophobic opposition in the Netherlands. But a recent parliamentary report about the movement underlined that there is nothing wrong with the movement. This is a major incident; however, Oxford Analytica curiously does not mention the report, giving only one side of the story, as it does in the Turkish case. | |
Gulen Schools - US Federal Investigation "Somebody's watching Me"
An article exposing a federal investigation into the Gulen Movement's involvement in charter schools (>30,000 students) has just been published in Il Sole 24 Ore (considered to be The Wall Street Journal of Italian newspapers): Un imam alla conquista degli Usa.
Yet still, the U.S. public remains uninformed about this whole situation because the American press has revealed very little to them.
------
Here is the translation.
An imam in the conquest of the United States -
by Claudio Gatti - Il Sole 24 Ore (Italy)
by Claudio Gatti - Il Sole 24 Ore (Italy)
February 20, 2011
------NEW YORK - A Muslim religious movement wants to conquer America. In fact, in a sense it has already conquered and no one has yet noticed. Nothing to do with al-Qaeda, terrorism or Islamic fundamentalism. We speak of a sect that is rather mysterious - so much so that it has been called the Muslim Opus Dei - founded in Turkey in the 1970s by an imam named Fethullah Gülen. And noted rather for its moderation.
After the disintegration of the Soviet Union, Gulen’s followers opened dozens of schools in Central Asia. From there, the network of “Gulenist” schools has spread across all of Asia and in many African countries with the aim of forming a new ruling class tied to Turkey and the Gulen movement. Eleven years ago, to escape the military, Gulen relocated from Turkey to a spiritual center in Pennsylvania that is two hours from New York. Since then, his movement, known among followers simply as "the Service" - Hizmet in Turkish – have opened a flurry of schools in the U.S.. The difference is that it is being done at the expense of American taxpayers.
Il Sole 24 Ore has been able to determine that for months, the FBI, Department of Justice and Department of Education have been investigating the possible illegal use of these education funds, a criminal conspiracy, extortion, and violation of immigration laws. "The suspicion is that, behind an educational effort, there is a giant conspiracy" a federal officer, requesting anonymity, explained to our newspaper. "The plan is as simple as it is brilliant: to use public funding for schools to educate a new generation of Americans favorably inclined to Turkey and thus indirectly to the Gulen movement, and also to spend some of that money to fund foundations and cultural centers."
Federal authorities have identified at least 120 schools opened in recent years by the movement in some twenty U.S. states, all charter schools, which are outside the loop of public education but financed by states and the federal government. Since each of these schools receives from 1.5 to 3 million dollars each year in public funds, it is a matter of hundreds of millions of dollars a year.
Those funds also serve to give employment to thousands of followers of the movement brought in specially from Turkey to teach scientific subjects. An analysis of work permits for teachers reveals that between just 2007 and 2009, the "Gulen" schools requested and were granted 1,851 visas in three years, more than some major American corporations such as Motorola and Google.
Part of the public funds also ends up in the coffers of companies founded by Gulen to provide services to schools. Il Sole 24 Ore has identified two such companies, Concept Schools and Breeze Inc., which in various documents appear to have contracted for over 100 thousand dollars a month with each of six schools in Ohio suspected of being affiliated to Hizmet.
Gulen declined to answer our questions, but when Il Sole 24 Ore asked Beksir [sic- should read Bekir] Aksoy, chairman of the spiritual center of Pennsylvania where the onetime imam lives, if the founder has any relationship with these schools, the response was an emphatic no. And the school administrators themselves have always denied any formal relationship with the movement.
But federal authorities have documents and emails that prove the link. Not only that, they show that the Hizmet would split the U.S. territory into five regions, assigning each of these to a single responsible individual, and that each teacher "imported" from Turkey would be required to return a percentage of their salary to the movement.
The region including Ohio was to be entrusted to a Turkish imam named Veli Aslan, better known as "brother Veli.” An email sent in June 2008 with regard to teachers who were late in making the paybacks reads: "Brother Veli wants to have all the “salary returns." And he says to withhold future salaries from those who have not made them."
More incriminating still is an email dated June 13, 2007 and sent to the principal of a school in Ohio and copied to the CEO of Concept Schools, a board member of Breeze, and the Executive Director of the Niagara Foundation, a foundation personally headed by Fethullah Gulen. The email recommends "increasing the number of teachers from Turkey ... to acquire more money."
Federal investigators believe that proves the involvement of all the various branches of Hizmet - schools, service organizations, and the most important Gulenist foundation in the U.S. - in what they call "the Tuzuk conspiracy", namely the illegal financing of the movement at the expense of taxpayers.
The man
From Izmir to Washington
Fethullah Gulen, born in 1941 in Erzurum, Turkey, was in his youth a disciple of the Muslim leader Said Nursi. In 1966 he moved to Izmir, where the audience of faithful who attended his sermons began to widen. In the 70s he founded the Gulen Movement, which takes its name, known to his followers as Hizmet, "the service:" an organization in no time very active in establishing schools, first in Asia and Africa, and today in the United States, with the goal of creating a ruling class tied to Turkey and the movement.
Friday, February 18, 2011
Monday, February 14, 2011
Gulen Schools Worldwide- Unemployed Teachers in Turkey Protest
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| Teachers in Turkey protest, there are 300,000 teachers in Turkey without permanant jobs Will the Gulen Movement work to improve the horrid educational system in Turkey? Non Gulen Teachers are bieng pushed out of teaching jobs in Turkey. Economic recovery fails to cheer up Turkey's jobless ANKARA — Turkey's economy may have staged a spectacular recovery from the global crisis, but the man in the street sees little reason to celebrate as unemployment remains high and the government keeps the belt tight. University-educated Bayram Dalyan has held jobs as a construction worker, waiter and courier in recent years and is currently working as a part-time survey taker, earning some 400 Turkish lira ($250, 183 euros) per month, a mere quarter of the average salary. He is one of some 300,000 teachers who have failed to get permanent jobs at public schools, despite shortages, as the government keeps a tight grip on the state payroll via annual contracts or part-time positions with lesser pay. "The macro-economic figures may seem fine, but if you look at the real needs of the people, the economy is a disaster," grumbles the 31-year-old. "I see more and more people collecting the bad fruits and vegetables that vendors dump at markets in the evening. Yes, the economy is really doing fine," he says tongue-in-cheek, sipping tea in a cafe in downtown Ankara. Outside, Eyup Kostan sells his hand-made notebooks on a street stall, braving the sub-zero temperature. Another of the army of jobless, the 24-year-old gives a long account of failed job applications since his graduation in industrial drawing in 2007. "When I read all those articles of economic success in the newspapers I feel like swearing... It's all about banks, interest rates and stock exchange but what about the people?" he complains. Following a severe recession, the Turkish economy grew by 11.8, 10.2 and 5.5 percent in the first three quarters last year, outstripping the pace of global recovery. The country's financial sector, which underwent a drastic overhaul in the early 2000s, weathered the global crisis largely unscathed. But unemployment remains a major challenge for the government in a country where an overwhelmingly young population swells the workforce each year and a declining farming sector drives unqualified labourers to urban areas. The jobless rate stood at 11.2 percent, or 2.9 million people, in the three months to November, according to latest official data. But experts say the figures fail to reflect the real picture due to widespread undeclared unemployment, or qualified people working in menial jobs. The rate is even more alarming among young people aged up to 24, standing at 21.3 percent in the same period. Stories of university graduates doing menial work have become a fixture in the Turkish press, with the problem compounded by a much-criticised government drive to inaugurate dozens of new universities across the country. On Wednesday, for instance, some 3,000 people, among them engineers and city planners, applied for 350 firefighter vacancies at the Istanbul municipality, media reports said. At the weekend, more than 1,000 candidates lined up for an exam for 16 court clerk positions in Corum, while another 4,300 applicants competed for 160 similar vacancies in Izmir. But Turkey's tough-talking Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has bluntly rejected criticism, saying that "there is no rule that all university graduates will have jobs" and that "it is better to be an educated jobless." His Islamist-rooted Justice and Development Party (AKP) has sought to balance austerity policies with social measures targeting mainly the poor, significantly improving access to health services, building cheap homes for the needy and handing out massive food aid. The AKP remains Turkey's most popular party ahead of general elections, expected in June, in which it will seek a third straight term in power. |
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