The Brotherhood: America's Next Great Enemy (23 page)

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Authors: Erick Stakelbeck

Tags: #Political Science / Political Ideologies / Conservatism & Liberalism

BOOK: The Brotherhood: America's Next Great Enemy
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Gülen’s supporters insist the tape was doctored to twist his words, although they have never presented any evidence to back up their claim. He was charged in absentia by a Turkish court in 2000 of seeking to overthrow Turkey’s secular government and establish an Islamic state (a feat, ironically enough, that Erdogan would begin accomplishing through legal means just two years later).
Gülen was eventually acquitted in 2008. By that time, he had been entrenched in the Poconos for several years, having arrived in the United States in 1999, supposedly to seek medical treatment (the German daily
Der Spiegel
claims Gülen had to flee Turkey after the video of his infamous secret sermon emerged).
16
Whatever the case, successive U.S. administrations have allowed Gülen to build his lucrative Islamist empire in the solitude of rural Pennsylvania. A federal judge granted him a green card in 2008, after two former CIA officers and a former U.S. Ambassador to Turkey personally vouched for him.
17
But Gülen’s influence in the United States reaches far beyond the bureaucratic elite. His movement is reportedly the country’s largest operator of charter schools, with an estimated 135 such institutions spread out across twenty-five states.
18
When Gülen tells his followers to “build schools instead of mosques,” he means it.
19
Although Gülen and school administrators deny that the schools have any connection to the movement, Berlinski notes, “federal forms required of nonprofits show that virtually all the schools have opened or operate with the aid of Gülen-inspired groups—local nonprofits that promote Turkish culture.”
The schools, which stress math and science, have innocuous sounding names, like “Truebright Science Academy” and “Beehive Science and Technology Academy,” that give no hint of any link to a famous Islamist imam. That hasn’t prevented them from drawing U.S. law enforcement and government scrutiny, as Berlinski, a U.S. native now living in Istanbul, described in an in-depth 2012 piece for
City Journal
:
The FBI and the Departments of Labor and Education have been investigating the hiring practices of some of these schools . . . particularly the replacement of certified American teachers with uncertified Turkish ones who get higher salaries than the Americans did, using visas that are supposed to be reserved for highly skilled workers who fill needs unmet by the American workforce . . . some of these new arrivals have come to teach English, which often they speak poorly, or English as a second language, which often they need themselves. They have also been hired as gym teachers, accountants, janitors, caterers, painters, construction workers, human-resources managers, public-relations specialists, and—of all things—lawyers.
Two of the schools, located in Texas, have been accused of sending school funds—which are supplied by the government, of course, since these are charter schools—to other Gülen-inspired organizations.... Federal authorities are also investigating several of the movement’s schools for forcing employees to send part of their paychecks to Turkey.... There is no evidence that Islamic proselytizing takes place at the American Gülen schools and much evidence that students and parents like them. Most seem to be decent educational establishments, by American standards; graduates perform reasonably well, and some perform outstandingly.
So what are the schools for? Among other things, they seem to be moneymakers for the [Gülen movement]. They’re loaded with private, state, and federal funding, and they have proved amazingly effective at soliciting private donations. The schools are also H-1B visa factories and perhaps the main avenue for building the Gülen community in the United States .
20
 
One Gülen school in North Philadelphia reportedly receives some $3 million annually in taxpayer money.
21
That means American taxpayers have officially come full circle: funding Islamist movements abroad—in Muslim Brotherhood–led Egypt and elsewhere—and now also at home.
Maddeningly, classified documents released by WikiLeaks in 2011 show that U.S. officials know exactly what Gülen is up to. “Gulen supporters account for an increasing proportion of [the] . . . nonimmigrant visa applicant pool,” a U.S. consular official in Istanbul observed. “Consular officials have noticed that most of these applicants share a common characteristic: They are generally evasive about their purpose of travel to the United States.”
Another section of the leaked cable may explain the reason for that evasiveness. U.S. officials, it states, “have multiple reliable reports that the Gulenists 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 and we have steadily heard reports about how the schools indoctrinate boarding students.”
22
A senior American official who spoke anonymously to the
New York Times
in 2012 summarized the situation: “We are troubled by the secretive nature of the Gulen movement, all the smoke and mirrors.... It is clear they want influence and power. We are concerned there is a hidden agenda to challenge secular Turkey and guide the country in a more Islamic direction.”
23
If American officials are indeed concerned about Gülen, the reality on the ground inside the United States—where Gülenists continue to establish charter schools nationwide and exert local influence—reflects something vastly different.
The notoriously multiculturalist Dutch government, on the other hand, cut public funding to the Gülenists in 2008 after conducting an investigation that found the movement discouraged members from integrating into Dutch society. Perhaps the Dutchmen perused one of Gülen’s books, called
Cag ve Nesil
(
This Era and the Young Generation
), in which the so-called Master Teacher wrote, “Westerners will exhibit no human behavior,” and lambasted fellow Turks who wish to align more closely with Europe as, “freeloaders,” “parasites,” and “leukemia.”
24
Gülen, who has reportedly only left his Poconos compound a handful of times since arriving over a decade ago, also found time to release a 2011 video message calling on the Turkish military to attack Kurdish separatists. The peace-loving advocate of interfaith harmony railed, “Locate them, surround them, break up their units, let fire rain down upon their houses, drown out their lamentations with even more wails, cut off their roots and put an end to their cause. ”
25
Some nasty stuff there from ol’ Hocaefendi. All was perfectly tranquil, however, as my camera crew and I departed the Golden Generation Worship and Retreat Center following our guided tour. No diatribes about slowly conquering Turkey from within or raining fire down upon the Kurds. Just friendly handshakes and admonitions from fervent Gülen supporters—some of whom have been known to weep tears of reverence when discussing their beloved imam—to drop by again sometime. Sharia with a smile: coming soon to a school district near you.
In a rare 2005 interview, Fethullah Gülen shared his thoughts on the possibility of a revived Islamic super-state:
Today, those who believe that there is no need for a Caliphate say this because of the establishment of nation states and the development of ideas of independence. For these reasons, some people believe that the Khilafah has lost its effectiveness. There are some people who believe in the dynamics of Khilafah since it is a means of unity among Muslims and facilitates cooperation between Muslim nations through exchanging their skills and opportunities. The possibility of rallying the masses can easily coalesce around the religious term, Caliphate /Khilafah.
Having said this, I would say that the revival of the Caliphate would be very difficult and making Muslims accept such a revived Khilafah would be impossible. The perception of the modern world regarding the revival of Khilafah must be considered.
26
 
Gülen’s supporters often cite the above statement as supposed proof that he is not interested in seeing the caliphate reestablished. A few points to consider on that end. 1) As we’ve seen, Muslim Brothers in the West similarly downplay the possibility of a new caliphate and profess to have no desire for it. At the same time, they cheerlead for Brotherhood Islamists in the Middle East for whom the renewed caliphate is a core goal. 2) Notice Gülen’s careful, intentionally middle-of-the-road wording: “some people believe the caliphate has lost its effectiveness,” but, on the other hand, he notes, “some believe in the dynamics of the Khilafa.” 3) Yet Gülen never tells us what
he
believes about the caliphate. He suggests it would be difficult to accomplish, that it would be impossible to make Muslims today accept it and that it may lead to a negative world perception. But he never says that he personally opposes the caliphate, nor does he state definitively whether he thinks it is a good or bad thing. 4) Let’s also remember that those remarks, Gülen’s last recorded ones on the caliphate, were made in 2005—six full years before the outbreak of the so-called Arab Spring and the meteoric rise of caliphate-obsessed Islamists throughout the Middle East and North Africa.
Indeed, what was almost unthinkable as recently as December 2010—the rebirth of a unified Islamic super-state stretching from the Atlantic coastline in the west to the Himalayas in the east—is now perilously close to becoming reality. If, as some suggest, Gülen does harbor designs on being a potential caliph—the religious/political ruler who would lead this pan-Islamic union—he has plenty of competition. As we’ll see shortly, from Iran to Egypt to Saudi Arabia to Turkey and beyond, the forces seeking the long-awaited return of the caliphate feel that the wind is at their backs and the time is at hand.
As for Turkey, it led the Ottoman Caliphate from 1571 until Ataturk formally disbanded it in 1924 in an act that all Islamists—including the current Turkish government—consider a catastrophe. At the height of the Ottoman period, the Turks controlled most of the Middle East, North Africa, and the Caucasus, and conquered a large slice of Southeastern Europe, including Romania, Bulgaria, Albania, Greece, the former Yugoslavia, and parts of modern-day Hungary. Turkish-led Ottoman armies even laid siege to Vienna on two separate occasions before being beaten back. Under the stewardship of Erdogan and AKP, Turkey today is actively seeking to regain those glory days as leader of the worldwide Muslim ummah and head of the caliphate, while slowly but surely erasing Ataturk’s secular legacy. But before Erdogan can accomplish that, he could face a showdown with Gülen for the title of Turkey’s Islamist Top Dog.
Although Erdogan invited Gülen to return to his native land during a June 2012 speech (some Turkey-watchers think the politically shrewd Erdogan was simply calling Gülen’s bluff), there have been signs of cracks in the strategic partnership between AKP and the Gülenists in recent years .
27
Erdogan is threatened by the growing power and influence of the Gülen movement inside Turkey—particularly its domination of the police force and judiciary—and the Gülenists are growing increasingly bold in flexing their muscle and influence. Gülen declined Erdogan’s invitation to return to Turkey, but if he were to change his mind in the near future, things would get very interesting.
28
For now, though, the sometimes uneasy AKP/Gülenist alliance is working swimmingly, as the two factions continue to push Turkey toward becoming an Islamic state governed by sharia—with even grander regional ambitions in mind.
Those ambitions are spearheaded by Erdogan, who, while serving as mayor of Istanbul in 1994, declared, “Thank God almighty, I am a servant of sharia.”
29
In his decade-plus as Turkey’s prime minister, he has kept that unnerving pledge—and then some. In classic, gradualist Muslim Brotherhood fashion, Erdogan has managed to neutralize and cow the Turkish military and “Deep State” to an astonishing degree. There are obvious parallels here with Egypt, except that, upon his election in June 2012, Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi—in very un-Brotherhood-like fashion—essentially scrapped gradualism and went for the jugular right out of the gate. His moves to rapidly Islamicize Egyptian society and consolidate absolute power for the MB and its hardcore Salafist allies have angered a chunk of the Egyptian populace and led to violent civil unrest.
The crafty Erdogan, on the other hand, has suffered no such pitfalls. Beardless, with a neatly trimmed moustache, and clad in well-tailored suits, Erdogan—like Morsi and other Brotherhood leaders—looks perfectly at home at forums alongside Western leaders. He is a disciple of Necmettin Erbakan, the father of modern Turkish Islamism, who served as Turkey’s prime minister for a year until being ousted by the military in a 1997 coup over fears (well founded) that he sought to smash Turkey’s secular legacy.

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