NBC News reported last month that the White House was looking for ways to remove a Turkish exile Muhammed Fethullah Gülen from the U.S. to placate Turkey over the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, according to two senior U.S. officials and two other people briefed on the requests.
“In Argentina, Trump told Erdogan they were working on extraditing Gülen and other people,” Mevlut Cavusoglu said Sunday at a conference in Doha, referring to the G20 summit where the leaders met two weeks ago.
Gülen is legitimately here on asylum, and if sent back, he will disappear. The paranoid Erdogan believes Gülen’s responsible for the last uprising to oust him, which could be true or not.
Gülen would be no loss to the U.S. He’s a radical cleric and has been a big donor to the Clintons.
Muhammed Fethullah Gülen is a mysterious Islamic Imam who keeps much of his activities secret. Gülen helped move Turkey from a Western-style democracy to an Islamic ‘democracy’. Once a friend of Recip Erdogan’s, they are now on the outs. He came here for medical help in the 1990s and never returned because of accusations he was attempting to topple the Turkish government.
He is a very influential Muslim preacher and lives in a castle in Pennsylvania. His residency here has been supported and perhaps protected by the Clintons. They are believed to be behind his asylum here.
His Movement – Gülenism – is considered a cult by many while others praise him for sticking up for the West, even at risk of his safety. He stood up for the Jews during the Flotilla several years back.
He condemns violence. Some say he’s a misogynist.
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IS IT A CULT?
Conservative Frank Gaffney of The Center for Security Policy calls Gülenism a cult organized around Fethullah Gülen, whose principal purpose is the same as Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the President of Turkey.
Claire Lopez who wrote a thoroughly-researched book, Gülen, and the Gülenist Movement, told Frank Gaffney in an interview that her book covers Gulenists’ discriminatory hiring practices and their ever-expanding network of schools, 150 at least on the K-12 level and three universities. Their system in Texas is the largest, and they are expanding throughout the D.C. area.
PROTECTED BY THE CLINTONS
Chuck Ross of the Daily Caller has amply documented the extensive web of ties between Gülen, his supporters, and the Clintons. Gülen allies gave money to the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Clinton Global Initiative. They gave between $500,000 and $1 million to the Clinton Foundation. Gülen’s supporters have also been operating a charter school network. “60 Minutes” and others allege they may be designed to funnel U.S. taxpayer money back to his allies in Turkey.
H1B VISA FRAUD?
These private charter schools hire foreign teachers using the H1-B visa program. They claim the visas are needed because there aren’t enough qualified teachers in the United States. Of course, that is untrue.
Members of the Gülen Movement ship teachers into the United States from Turkey though there appears to be no need for Turkish teachers.
The teachers work in the chain of charter schools that have been established by the Gülenists. The schools are an outgrowth of the social and religious movement led by Fethullah Gülen.
Gülen denies ties to many of the schools which crop up in impoverished areas around the country. He is tied to Harmony schools, however, and they have cropped up in D.C. Texas, Georgia, Florida, et al., in 26 states, and they continue to expand. They concentrate on math and science and do not teach religion. While Islam is not taught, there are camps and other opportunities to learn about Islam outside of the schools. Also, the schools emphasize Turkish history and culture. The goal of these schools is to spread knowledge, they say. The schools are lucrative for the Gulen investors.
In 2011, the schools received $150 million in taxpayer dollars.
As the famed educator, Diane Ravitch asked: “…why should foreign nationals take over the functions of local government in the U.S.?”
UNDER INVESTIGATION
Harmony Schools have been under investigation by the FBI and the Department of Labor.
The Gülen movement boasts an estimated 8 million followers, 700 schools worldwide and $50 billion in assets.
Boiling Frogs Post, founded by Sibel Edmonds, has some interesting information about the movement:
In 1999 Gülen defected to the US shortly before his scandalous speech, where he is heard calling on his supporters to “work patiently and to creep silently into the institutions in order to seize power in the state”, became public. Turkish prosecutors demanded a ten-year sentence for Gülen for having “founded an organization that sought to destroy the secular apparatus of state and establish a theocratic state”. Mr. Gulen has not left the United States since.
The Netherlands has taken major steps to cut funding to all Gülen associated organizations and is investigating his operations. The Turkish Fethullah Gülen movement is really an Islamic fundamentalist group, claims Rotterdam council member Anita Fähmel (Leefbaar Rotterdam) on the basis of her own study of the Turkish movement.
The Russian government has banned all Gülen schools and the activities of the Nur sect in Russia.
In 1999 Uzbekistan closed all Gülen’s Madrasas and shortly afterward arrested eight journalists who were graduates of Gulen schools, and found them guilty of setting up an illegal religious group and of involvement in an extremist organization.
In Turkmenistan, government authorities have placed Gülen’s schools under close scrutiny and have ordered them to scrap the history of religion from curriculums.
Gülenism is the most successful movement in Azerbaijan’s unfolding Islamic revival.