An Introduction to Gülen Charter Schools in America
From Charter School Scandals:
In 1999, members of the Gulen Movement, a secretive and controversial cult-like religious group, opened their first charter school in the U.S. (in Ohio). Rapid expansion of the Gulen Movement’s network has resulted in the largest charter school chain in the U.S. (See my guest article in the Washington Post, “Largest charter school network in the U.S.: Schools tied to Turkey.” 3/27/2012). During the 2011-2012 school year, 135 Gulen charter schools operated in 26 states.
This increasingly well-rooted network provides the Gulen Movement with daily access to the minds of over 45,000 students, and yearly access to hundreds of millions of hard-earned tax dollars. How did it come to pass that most Americans, including these students’ parents, are completely unaware of this phenomenon?
The Gulen Movement is one of the most powerful and influential forces within Turkish society. Outside of Turkey, it also operates as an expansive, coordinated, and ambitious transnational human energy force comprised of the devoted followers of Fetullah Gulen. Estimates place the number of Gulen followers at between one and eight million.
For nearly two decades, Gulen’s followers have been traveling to other countries in order to operate schools, Turkish “cultural” centers, “interfaith dialog” centers, and business organizations out of which they work to advance their movement’s goals. This is an ambitious religious group with a serious geopolitical agenda.
Gulen, a charismatic but very controversial imam of the Nur sect, has been the most influential Islamic leader in Turkey for the past few decades. The Movement and its membership is called by different names: the Hizmet movement (or just Hizmet), the Fethullah Gulen Community (or FCG, or simply the “Community”), Fethullah Gulen’s missionaries, the Nurchilar religious movement (used in Central Asia), and the cemaat.
The charter school network in the U.S. is part of the expanding global network of schools being operated by members of this group. Estimates place the total number of schools at over one thousand and operating in ~100 countries around the world. In other countries the schools are often locally referred to as “Turkish” schools and they are nearly all private. The charter school system in the U.S. is allowing the Gulen Movement’s schools to be publicly funded.
Typically, teams of mostly Turkish-born scientists, academics, and businessmen form a non-profit and then submit a charter school application. Those applications portray the founders — some of whom have only been living in the U.S. for a short time — as individuals who decided to start a charter school because they care so deeply about American children. Many of the non-Turkish-born individuals who appear on the founding and governing boards can be tied to Gulenist “cultural” or “interfaith” organizations. The location where these efforts take place is highly-coordinated because the Gulenist expansion is an imperialistic campaign. For more explanation, read this page.
The charter school applications omit many important things. They make no mention of Fethullah Gulen or how the purpose of the school is to implement Gulen’s educational philosophy and vision. The charter school applications make no mention about how the “international teachers” the schools plan to hire will exclusively be from Turkey (along with a few from other Turkic countries where the movement has made inroads). They do not mention that among the foreign languages to be offered will always be Turkish. The applications do not mention the emphasis that will be placed on Turkish cultural instruction. These things are not mentioned in the charter school applications because the Gulenist founders do not want to arouse suspicion. When questioned by reporters, school operators may admit that some staff members may be “Gulen-inspired.”