According to Turkish Invitation website, by November 2012, there were Gulen group run schools were established in as many as 120 countries.
It is extremely secretive, and many of its members (the "Gulenists") and organizations will not even openly admit their affiliation. Publicly, the Gulen Movement advertises itself as a grassroots volunteer civil society movement that is interested only in humanitarian and educational works. Its members like to stress that it is loosely organized with no central coordination.
Outside of Turkey, the network of Gulen schools has been rapidly expanding all over the world, and around 1999 the Gulenists began to establish publicly-funded charter schools in the United States, where they already had a small number of private schools.
In September 2010, a respected former police chief named Hanefi Avci wrote a best-selling book about how the Gulen Movement has infiltrated Turkish institutions and stealthily taken over the state. Not long after this book appeared, Avci was arrested. It is widely believed that the charges against him are false, and that the underlying reason for the arrest was retaliation for this book.
Gulen and his schools have been controversial not only in Turkey, but also in Central Asia , Europe , and now the United States as well.
The doctoral dissertation of Mustafa Gokhan Sahin, who has several Gulenist affiliations, contains references to US support for the Gulen Movement's activities outside of Turkey. Here are two quotes from his dissertation (boldface added):
"For many in Turkey this was exporting 'Turkish Model' to a region [Central Asia] which was under Iranian and Wahhabi influence. In policy circles, especially with U.S. support, the Turkish model of a secular state with a moderate pro-western Islam was the most highly regarded alternative. The international support for the Turkish Model also contributed to the expansion of the Gulen community in the region without any impediment until suspicion and resistance replaced the 'cautious acquiescence of Russia' and some other Central Asian states. At times the activities of the movement was [sic] considered too proAmerican, and schools run by Gulen community both in Russia and Uzbekistan were closed by the state in late 2000."
What is Fethullah Gulen?
In an article with the above title Germany-based American writer Frederick William Engdahl provides incite into Fethullah Gulen life:
When Gulen fled to Pennsylvania in 1999, Turkish prosecutors demanded a ten-year sentence against him for having "founded an organization that sought to destroy the secular apparatus of state and establish a theocratic state."
At that time the US Government's Department of Homeland Security and the US State Department both opposed Gulen's application for what was called a "preference visa as an alien of extraordinary ability in the field of education."
They presented arguments demonstrating that the fifth-grade dropout, Fethullah Gulen, should not be granted a preference visa.
However, over the objections of the FBI, of the US State Department, and of the US Department of Homeland Security, three former CIA operatives intervened and managed to secure a Green Card and permanent US residency for Gulen.
The three CIA people supporting Gulen's Green Card application in 2007 were former US Ambassador to Turkey, Morton Abramowitz, CIA officials George Fidas and Graham E. Fuller.
In 2008, shortly after he wrote a letter of recommendation to the US Government asking to give Gulen the special US residence visa, Fuller wrote a book titled The New Turkish Republic: Turkey as a Pivotal State in the Muslim World. At the center of the book was praise for Gulen and his "moderate" Islamic Gulen Movement in Turkey:
"Gulen's charismatic personality makes him the number one Islamic figure of Turkey. The Gulen Movement has the largest and most powerful infrastructure and financial resources of any movement in the country" The movement has also become international, by virtue of its far-flung system of schools"in more than a dozen countries including the Muslim countries of the former Soviet Union, Russia, France and the United States."
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