Why should Turkish cleric Fethullah Gülen operate charter schools on U.S. Military Bases?
Started by Diane Kepus
By Robert R. Amsterdam
A
secretive Islamic movement is trying to infiltrate the U.S. military by
establishing and operating publicly-funded charter schools targeted
toward children of American service personnel.
That
charge may sound like a conspiracy theory from the lunatic fringe, but
it is real and it is happening right now. The most immediate threat is
in Nevada, where Coral Academy of Science Las Vegas (CASLV) is currently
negotiating with the United States Air Force to locate a charter school
at Nellis Air Force Base, with classes starting this fall. What is not
widely known is that CASLV is part of a nationwide organization of
charter schools and other businesses headed by Islamic cleric Fethullah
Gülen, a reclusive but influential Imam living under self-imposed exile
in Pennsylvania to avoid criminal prosecution in his native Turkey.
Our
law firm has been engaged by the Republic of Turkey – a key NATO ally
in a hotbed region – to conduct a wide-ranging investigation into the
operations and geopolitical influence of the Gülen organization, which
is behind the Coral Academy of Science and over 140 other public charter
schools scattered across 26 American states. Our investigation, still
in its early stages, reveals that the Gülen organization uses charter
schools and affiliated businesses in the U.S. to misappropriate and
launder state and federal education dollars, which the organization then
uses for its own benefit to develop political power in this country and
globally.
Aside
from defrauding American taxpayers, the Gülen organization has an even
more ominous objective in the United States. The organization is one of
the country’s largest recipients of H1-B “specialty occupation” visas,
which it uses to import Turkish teachers into its charter schools,
supposedly because local U.S. talent is not available to fill math and
science teaching positions in its charter schools. The Gülen
organization illegally threatens to revoke these visas unless the
Turkish teachers agree to kick back part of their salary to the
organization.
More
importantly, the Turkish teachers in Gülen organization charter schools
are evaluated not on the basis of their teaching skills, but rather on
whether they achieve monthly goals in a secret point system designed to
instil Turkish culture and Gülenist ideology in our American students.
The goal, we are told, is to develop a Gülenist following of high
achievers, incubated in our local community schools across the country.
The
Gülen organization has been able to grow in the U.S. largely because it
conceals both its identity and its motives. The first line of defense
for Gülenist charter schools and companies has been to deny any
affiliation with Fethullah Gülen (their officers and directors claim
that they are merely “inspired by” Gülen’s religious teachings), as if
the simple creation of business entities in which Fethullah Gülen
himself holds no ownership interest could alter his ultimate control
over the organization. In reality, the governing boards of the Gülen
charter schools are populated disproportionately by loyal Turkish men
answering to a handful of Imams who rule over defined regions across the
U.S., reporting ultimately to Gülen in Saylorsburg, Pennsylvania.
In
Nevada, CASLV is a three-campus school operating under a charter held
by tax-exempt Coral Education Corp., headquartered in Reno. Three of
Coral’s board members are Turkish, one of whom was formerly the
Principal at two other Gülen organization charter schools, the Sonoran
Science Academy at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Arizona and the Bay
Area Technology School in California.
Unfortunately,
Nellis Air Force Base is not the Gülen organization’s first stab at a
U.S. military base. The organization successfully opened a school on
Davis-Monthan AFB in 2009, and it tried but failed to gain access to
Marine Corps Base Hawaii and Naval Station Great Lakes in Illinois. In
California, Magnolia Public Schools applied for a charter in Oceanside,
where Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton is located, although it
temporarily withdrew its application after our law firm pointed out
Magnolia’s connection to the Gülen organization earlier this year.
Lest
there be any doubt about the objectives in the United States, the
strategy of subtly indoctrinating school children into the Gülen
movement is a familiar one overseas, and there is great peril in
allowing it to flourish in this country. In his native Turkey, Gülen
created a network of hundreds of schools that have produced – over the
past three decades – a vast cadre of followers now prepared to perform
his bidding from official positions in government, law enforcement, the
judiciary and the media. Although precise numbers are impossible to
verify, some have estimated that he currently controls more than half of
the entire Turkish police force. The Economist newspaper compared
Gülen’s influence in Turkey to the Freemason infiltration of law
enforcement and judicial elites in Europe during the last century.
Numerous documented cases in Turkey involving planted evidence, tainted
prosecutions and illegal incarceration of Gülen critics underscore that
he is quite willing to abuse his power and influence.
The
same game plan is playing out, at last count, in 101 countries on every
habitable continent. With an estimated six million followers globally
and assets in the range of $20-$50 billion, the Gülen organization has
managed to conceal a great deal about its doctrine, mission or
objectives. Whether Gülen’s followers are classified as a religious
sect, a commercial enterprise, a political movement or – as Dutch
legislators concluded – a cult, it should be a matter of significant
concern for our security and regulatory authorities.
In
light of Gülen’s modus operandi elsewhere, the Department of Homeland
Security should be asking itself why such a non-transparent,
religion-based organization would seek to establish itself on our
military bases, teaching the children of our service men and women.
No comments:
Post a Comment