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School House by TBoard, on Flickr
With the FBI and the Departments of Labor and Education investigating them and parents and officials in Ohio, Hawaii, Arizona, Utah, Texas, and elsewhere questioning their financial dealings, it appears that Gülen charter schools—managed by Concept Schools and other companies—have been duping lawmakers, politicians, school boards, and parents for several years now, with accusations flying that the group is using U.S. taxpayer money to help fund the Islamist Hizmet organization in Turkey.
According to Charter School Scandals (one of the top charter school watchdog groups and a close follower of Gülen) there have been 155 Gülen charter schools established or attempted in 28 states in the U.S. and hundreds in other countries.
Gülen charter schools are founded by followers of Fethullah Gülen, a wealthy reformer who lives in exile in Pennsylvania after being kicked out of Turkey for attempting to establish an Islamic state. His group has allegedly infiltrated the Turkish police force, according to cables released by Wikileaks. The goals of the Gülen movement are murky, even to experts and U.S. government officials, who often disagree or change their opinions of the group.
Nonetheless, investigations of the Gülen charter schools are happening. As the Philadelphia Inquirer and other sources note, the FBI investigations are being coordinated by prosecutors in Scranton, Pennsylvania, and involve hundreds of Gülen charter school members nationwide. Suspicions center around the group supposedly using taxpayer money to bring teachers here from Turkey and other countries who are part of this religious group. These teachers then agree to ship back a percentage of their paychecks to the Gülen movement in Turkey.
In Indiana, the Indiana Math and Science Academy’s (IMSA) two Gülen charters ((North and West) have applied for 17 visas for teachers and other individuals to come to Indianapolis and work. With 1,397 students enrolled in these schools since 2007, Indiana taxpayers have paid out millions. Managed by Concept Schools, the Indiana branch has received at least $235,000 from the Walton Family, owners of Wal-Mart and one of the biggest payers in the charter school movement. Gülen charters nationwide are loaded with private, state, and federal funding.
In 2008, Ball State University, which sponsors IMSA, withdrew the group’s request for a school in Gary after finding that the school had not hired teachers, enrolled students, or found an adequate building.
Although not currently operating in the Hoosier state, Vedat Akgun is one of the founders of the Gülen charter movement in Indiana. In 2001, Akgun petitioned for the Indiana Science Academy, and in 2002, along with current IMSA board member Kevin Miller, senior pastor at St. Luke’s United Methodist Church, Akgun founded the Indiana Life Sciences Academy. Although applications were submitted, these schools did not, for some reason, made it to fruition.
Vedat Akgun is a former founder of another branch of Gülen schools, Horizon schools, which is run by Concept Schools in Ohio. Currently, he owns New Plan Learning (formerly known as Breeze, Inc.), a charter school supporting company some say is a for-profit outfit working with Concept Schools. In 2007, auditors found that Horizon was using taxpayer money to pay for visas and state-aid for property taxes, which is illegal in Ohio.
Another IMSA board member and co-founder, Bilal Eksili, directs the Indiana branch of the Niagara Foundation (the group operates in eight states) and Indiana’s Holy Dove Foundation, both peace and interfaith groups associated with the Gülen movement and almost indistinguishable in nature. Oddly, besides giving luncheons and trips to Turkey, sitting on charter school boards, and hiring unpaid interns to do the business work of organizing meetings with Indiana governmental officers, religious leaders, and professors, it doesn’t appear that the Holy Dove/Niagara Foundations do anything to promote diversity, love, peace, and friendship, as their mission statement suggests. Without even an advisory board listed online, it appears the two groups are one-man shows.
Eksili does utilize, however, one of the nationwide Gülen group’s strategies. To win support of governmental officials nationwide, Gülenists invite high-ranking state leaders to dinners to speak and then lavish the officials with awards. Among those in Indiana who have been given awards by Eksili are Mitch Daniels, Bart Peterson (former Indianapolis mayor and now member of the charter school supporter, the Mind Trust), Dan Burton, Richard Lugar, and even Michael Welch, Special Agent in Charge of the Indianapolis FBI division. Charter school supporter and Indiana Superintendent of Public Education Tony Bennett (see photos 8 and 9 here), as well as other Republicans, are often in attendance at these events.
With Eksili as tour guide, most of the IMSA board members have traveled to Turkey to give support. Another Turkey tour guide and officer for the Holy Dove Foundation, Kazim Eldes, was also involved in IMSA’s founding and has served as Indiana Regional Vice-President of Concept Schools, IMSA’s management company.
IMSA board members include Tim Nation (leader of The Peace Learning Center in Eagle Creek Park, Indianapolis, which uses Gülen-based curriculum, among other things, in their youth programs) who praises Fethullah Gülen in videos; Janette Moody, founder of Literacy for Life, Inc. and a consultant for the Indiana Department of Education; and Murat Dundar, a former Los Alamos National Labs intern/science researcher and computer/information professor at IUPUI.
The Indianapolis FBI, when contacted by email, said it does not “disclose information on investigations.” Also, Tony Bennett’s Chief of Staff (and former director of the charter-school group, School Choice Indiana) Heather Neal said she was unaware of any such investigation.
As it now stands, there is no proof that an investigation of Gülen charter schools is happening in Indiana. But if anything becomes of any investigation that may or may not be happening, it’s safe to say that the media will either downplay it or ignore it altogether. With Daniels, Bennett, Republicans and state corporate leaders working overtime to drain more money from public education and feed it to the charter operators, the last thing they need now is to be associated with more shady dealings.
If anyone has information on the Gülen charter schools in Indiana, please post it at Indiana Government Exposed.
4 Comments
Thanks for staying all over this story like a cheap suit, Doug!
Well, Doug, my mind is boggled. I’d love to make a substantive comment, but all I may be capable of right now is adding some links to articles I’ve just read about Gulen, the Gulen movement, and schools in Arizona and Utah.
This last hour or so of reading has shown me that there are about 100 or more Gulen-related schools in various states; that those schools may have from about 33% to 50% of staff and teachers as Turkish men who (even if unqualified to teach) receive their green cards (and jobs, visa, relocation expenses) in return for sending a percentage of their salaries (40% for a single man) back to the Turkish organization. That non-Turkish women teachers are told to wear headscarves and told that women should be home raising children. That Turkish culture is part of the curriculum even for preschoolers, and all students must learn Turkish (which prepares them for school-sponsored trips to Turkey). That within a given school, up to 50% of personnel, as well as the entire school board, can be composed of Turkish men. And that Gulen — who is perceived as a ‘moderate, modern, western-friendly Msulim’ has been quoted as describing the schools’ (and the movement’s) mission as one of entering societies at a professional level and shaping the younger generation’s thoughts, until they (and people they have taught) have reached a kind of critical mass that will allow them to take over the reins of a society.
You’d think that the Tea Partiers, especially the anti-furriner crowd, would be all over this like white on rice. And how could anybody, even ‘Ditch Mitch’ Daniels, justify importing unqualified teachers from Turkey instead of hiring local people?
Anyway, the links follow. I’m a little skeptical of the Wikipedia info, it seems to me to have been written by Gulenites.
Gulen movement — http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%BClen_movement
Gulen himself — http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fethullah_G%C3%BClen
Articles on some schools (AZ, UT):
http://www.deseretnews.com/article/print/700036619/Islamic-links-to-Utahs-Beehive-Academy-probed.html
[quote]
While some see Gülen as a docile advocate for religious tolerance, others argue he is practicing a form of “silent jihad.” In a 1999 sermon that aired on Turkish television, Gülen said that to effect reform, “every method and path is acceptable (including) lying to people.”
“You must move in the arteries of the system without anyone noticing your existence until you reach all the power centers …” he said. “You must wait for the time when you are complete and conditions are ripe, until we can shoulder the entire world and carry it.”
Wayment had to take a deep breath the first time his research led him to a Gülen website. Could Gülen be the puppeteer behind Beehive’s administration, choreographing the school’s every move like a marionette show? It seemed far out.
“No one wants to think their kid’s public school is part of some international conspiracy,” Wayment said.
[quote ends]
http://www.tucsonweekly.com/tucson/hidden-agenda/Content?oid=1694764
[quote]
She says teachers and administers freely circulate among these schools. At the same time, says the parent, the Sonoran Academy seems constantly to be bringing Turkish educators into the United States, and subjecting students to substitute teachers while the teachers await work visas.
According to this parent, all of these ties may lead covertly back to the Gülen movement, named for the scholar, who founded a network of schools around the world and now lives in exile in Pennsylvania. She says several Sonoran Academy parents believe the school has a hidden agenda to promote Gülen’s brand of Turkish nationalism, advance sympathy for that country’s political goals such as winning acceptance into the European Union, and discourage official acknowledgement of Turkey’s genocide against the Armenians during World War I.
“We found one document, in Turkish, that talks about the purpose of these charter schools,” says the parent. “They refer to them very explicitly as schools (belonging) to their movement. They’re calculating, and they say if they can have something like 600 schools, then every year, they can produce 120,000 sympathizers for Turkey.
“I sent my kids to this school because I wanted them to meet regular Muslims and to see them as ordinary people,” she says. “But when I find that my kids are to be turned into genocide-deniers, that’s very disturbing to me.”
[quote ends]
http://azstarnet.com/news/science/environment/article_dec199db-be3f-5519-be3d-f6ad970db1f8.html
[quote]
Tucson’s Sonoran Science Academy and its sister schools import an unusually large proportion of their staff from foreign countries, especially Turkey, in a practice that parallels the customs of an important Turkish religious-political movement.
The five Sonoran Science Academy charter schools and their parent company, Daisy Education Corp., received U.S. Labor Department certification to fill 39 teaching and administrative jobs with foreigners last year, federal data show. From 2002 through 2009, the schools have received certifications for 120 H-1B visas.
That’s more certifications than any comparable school in Arizona received in that eight-year period – and more than the six biggest school districts in Southern Arizona combined.
[...]
“I don’t understand why we’re not hiring teachers from our areas here. I’m sure our teachers are just as qualified,” said Sonoran Science parent Julie Festerling, who works as a substitute teacher at other schools.
Some experts point to a different possible explanation: that Sonoran Science Academy is part of a loose global network of Turkish-run schools – 100 or more in the United States – inspired by Fethullah Gülen, who lives in exile in Pennsylvania. Worldwide, “Gülen schools” tend to hire teachers from Turkey and the broader “Turkic” world, including Central Asia, and their schools emphasize math, science and Turkish culture, scholars said.
“The schools are the basic avenue to build the Turkish community in America,” said Hakan Yavuz, a political science professor at the University of Utah who co-authored the 2003 book “Turkish Islam and the Secular State: The Gülen Movement.”
“The number of Turks in America is quite increased as a result of this movement.”
[end quote; also good info here on use of 1HB visas; also good sidebar background info]
The original post said that “The goals of the Gülen movement are murky.”
It is very difficult to comprehend their goals until you realize one very simple point, noted by Aydin Ozipek in his 2009 thesis. Ozipek went to a Gulen high school in Turkey, and then attended Fatih University, which is also run by the Gulen Movement. He had plenty of chances to observe the GM up close.
Ozipek wrote:
“I conclude that the primary objective of the Gulen Movement is to increase its share of power.”
This is why the Gulen Movement constantly mutates – just as a virus does under hostile conditions – and this continual process of adaptation and re-invention makes it indeed difficult to pin down. The GM doesn’t really stand for anything; it claims to promote education and to be a “civil society” movement, yet it doesn’t have any genuine commitment to either education or society (other than its own society-within-a-society.)
In Turkmenistan, the GM was quite willing to be complicit as the dictatorship of Saparmurat Niyazov utterly destroyed public education. A high-level Gulenist translated the onerous book Ruhnama, Niyazov’s incoherent treatise which replaced all other textbooks in Turkmenistan’s schools. All this was fine by them, as long as the GM could build their own elite schools and get business connections in Turkmenistan.
It is no different here in the US. Gulenists don’t leave their history and methodology behind when they come to our country. Here, they have played all sorts of manipulation games to convince everyone their schools are “excelling” while gleefully repeating the mantra about “our failing public schools.” Just to give one example, the Harmony schools in Texas require (yes, *require*) proof of acceptance to a college to graduate from high school. This is explicitly stated in school documents. Yet in their promotional material and applications for new charters, they boast that their “100% college acceptance rate” speaks to their proven educational model. When college acceptance is required to graduate, “100% college acceptance” becomes a tautology – yet this clever trick has fooled numerous people, including journalists.
It’s all about acquisition of power, which of course involves money too, siphoned off the schools in various ways, and recruitment of sympathizers by whatever means. Politicians can be won over with money, naive but well-meaning citizens can be won over with Turkey trips, and students are purposefully befriended by teachers who (parents are in awe of their amazing dedication!) try to spend as much time with them as possible in extracurricular activities. Guess why.
To add to the confusion, many individuals have leaped to the conclusion that religious indoctrination is taking place in the schools, despite the complete lack of evidence. It is not the point at all. The teachers befriend carefully selected students (preferably the highest-performing ones) without any sort of preaching. It isn’t necessary for the plan. Once firmly ensconced in the Gulenist web, the students will serve the movement by speaking and writing favorably of their school, defending the GM (“I know these people very well and they are the finest and most dedicated educators…….the accusations are absurd…..”) and helping the GM to build more schools, get more money, plant more people in influential positions, build more schools, get more money, plant more people in influential positions, build more schools,….etc.
Just think of it as a virus that never stops replicating and has endless capacity to mutate.
Post 9/11 I ran into a Turkish middle school teacher from Dayton Ohio, who in retrospect was probably from the Horizon school there. He was at the St. Louis gateway Arch and said he was checking it out for a school field trip. He was with at least 5 other men, at least two of which were Russian.
I pointed him over to the free brochures.
Now I wonder why when you google gulen you wind up with Sibel Edmonds.