“a reclusive but influential Imam living under self-imposed exile in Pennsylvania to avoid criminal prosecution in his native Turkey,” as described by Robert Amsterdam, founder of the international law firm Amsterdam & Partners, LLP conducting a wide-ranging investigation into the operations and geopolitical influence of the Gülen organization, a worldwide group of approximately 6 million followers and students of the US taxpayer funded Gulen schools.
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. His schools are highly controversial for their involvement in politics and a trail of cronyism, fraud, and radical indoctrination of students, and attempts of infiltration of military bases to indoctrinate children of military personnel.
Joel Richardson, the Christian author and filmmaker, said Gülen is without a doubt an Islamist with an hidden agenda. His strategy mirrors that of the Muslim Brotherhood, which advocates non-violent civilizational jihad as the means to infiltrate and influence Western societies.
“In the past, he has made very overt comments about the need to infiltrate the arteries of the system and so forth,” Richardson told WND. “On the other hand, he is definitely non-violent and has furthered the idea, popular within some of the Turkish-Islamist movement of non-violent Islamism.”
In 2013 Gülen and Turkish President Erdogan had a final falling out. “These are two powerful men each intent on seizing power for themselves, not that they disagree in any way over the direction to take Turkey, which is away from the West and toward the neo-Ottoman Islamic caliphate,” Lopez says.
The U.S. gave Gülen legal permanent resident status in 2008, and he is now eligible for citizenship.
Erdogan struck harshly against the Gülen movement in Turkey, rooting numerous Gülen supporters out of the government and throwing them in prison. Erdogan has called for the U.S. to extradite Gülen for allegedly subverting the Turkish government.
“In terms of the danger that Gülen represents to the United States, I would say that five years ago, Gülen and his charter schools were a bigger concern,” Richardson said. “They still need to be defunded by the U.S. government. Today, however, compared to the much larger dangers we are facing, including the very real Islamists that Obama has allowed into the U.S. government, or the very real, very violent Islamists that have infiltrated the country, Gülen, with his ideological jihad, is a relatively small fish, in an ever-expanding pond of violent Islamists.”
Clare Lopez said the Gülen movement helped drag Turkey back to its Islamic roots and so his influence should not be under-estimated in the U.S., and certainly should not be given taxpayer funding.
“Look what’s happened to Turkey, the Islamists were voted in, and Erdogan is on a neo-Ottoman path to take Turkey back to its roots as a jihadist state, so I think there is ever good reason to be concerned about his activities (in the U.S.),” Lopez said.
In March of 2016 the following report erased any doubts about Gulen’s terrorist and criminal activities in the US – spanning over two decades:
Living in self-imposed exile in Pennsylvania, with a net worth of around $25 billion, Turkish Islamic cleric Fethullah Gülen has catalyzed a global movement of charter schools from Africa to Latin America into the United States. Building private schools in over 180 countries around the world, the global Gülen movement has paved the way for the largest U.S. charter school network with more than 140 schools in some 26 states.
What lies underneath this charter-school network, however, is a possible undercurrent of white-collar crime and corruption. Known in Turkey as the Fethullahist Terrorist Organization or FETÖ this growing network is being investigated by the FBI for everything from fraud and malpractice, to misuse of public funds. One spokeswoman for the bureau said that an investigation is ongoing and FBI agents carried out raids at 19 Gülen-affiliated charter schools in Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio in 2014.
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Diplomatic cables released by Wikileaks demonstrate a concern by U.S. officials that these Turkish teachers and businesses “might be using the reputation of the school as a cover to get to the U.S.” These cables state that the H1B visa applications were “not convincing” and that Gülen’s more moderate message “cloaks a more sinister and radical agenda.”
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Receiving approximately $150 million a year in tax breaks and subsidies, government officials are increasingly concerned that taxpayer dollars are being used to fund a close-knit network of Turkish teachers and businesses using charter schools as a Trojan horse for embedding into the U.S. education system.
In March 2016, Former NATO Supreme Allied Commander Gen. Wesley Clark went on record and stated that the United States has become a part of Turkey’s problems for letting Fethullah Gülen, who is wanted in Turkey, stay in the U.S. Clark went on adding that he found it strange how Gulen has been allowed to remain and operate in the United States:
We are even part of that. One of the most wanted people in Turkey is a man named Gülen, a former ally of President Erdoğan, who is in the United States, running a network of charter schools subsidized by the United States. Very strange,” he added.
Documents from Wikileaks has shown that American officials have been worried Gülen could be targeting children across the U.S. through running over 125 Gülen charter schools in 25 states:
In 2005, one U.S. embassy worker expressed concern about the schools: “We have multiple reliable reports that the Gülenists use their school network (including dozens of schools in the U.S.) to cherry pick students they think are susceptible to being molded as proselytizers,” U.S. Embassy officials in Ankara said in a 2005 report. And we have steadily heard reports about how the schools indoctrinate boarding students,” they said.”
Despite the publication of mounting criminal evidence against Gulen’s operations, to this date the FBI has continued shielding this terrorist (mostly aided by ‘special council’ Robert Mueller):
The Chicago Sun-Times reports on Concept Schools, a charter school network in the Midwest funded by the Gülen movement. Though an ongoing FBI investigation has found the schools divert Illinois taxpayer dollars to Gülen-affiliated contractors, the Concept network continues to receive government funds:
Days after federal agents swept into the headquarters of Concept Schools and a charter school it operates in Rogers Park in June 2014, top Chicago Public Schools officials took notice of the raids on the taxpayer-funded charter operator but decided to steer clear.
More than two years since the FBI raids brought the still-ongoing federal investigation involving Concept to light, the charter operator has continued to do business with contractors identified in court documents as allegedly having been involved in defrauding a government grant program, records obtained by the Chicago Sun-Times show.
Chronological History of Events Related to Fethullah Gülen
Liberal Court Reinstates Conviction of General Flynn’s Former Business Partner Whose Ultimate Crime Was Outing a Terrorist
