[incarcerated]

Cont.


The Gulen movement and AKP have carried their presence to the university level as well. The pivot of the university battle is an institution called the Higher Education Council (YOK). YOK was created by the 1982 Turkish Constitution to keep a lid on political dissent in the universities, since prior to the 1980 military coup, universities were the driving forces behind the political violence between right- and left-wing activists that marred the 1970s in Turkey. Up until 2007, YOK was a bastion for hardcore secularists in Turkey to ensure their dominance over the universities and prevent the entrenchment of Islamists in Turkey’s higher education institutions.
When the last secular president of YOK retired in 2007, the AKP had its chance to appoint one of its own, professor Yusuf Ziya Ozcan, an AKP loyalist and sympathizer of the Gulen movement. Since then, YOK has been at the forefront of the highly polarizing headscarf issue in Turkey and has used its powers to appoint religious conservatives to university presidencies. Under the AKP’s watch, and particularly since 2007, 37 public universities and 22 new private universities have been built, many of them in Anatolian cities such as Konya, Kayseri and Gaziantep where the Anatolian business class is concentrated or in less-populated and impoverished cities where young Turks have traditionally lacked access to higher education. The private universities are mostly funded by Gulenist businessmen.
Strategic Placement
But the Gulen movement and AKP do not only want loyal students to attend Gulen-run universities. Indeed, a core part of their strategy is to ensure the placement of their students in a variety of secular institutions where they can gradually grow in number and position themselves to influence strategic centers of Turkish society. For example, the university results of a Gulenist student may qualify him to attend the most elite university in Istanbul, but the movement will arrange for the student to attend a military academy instead, where the Gulenists are trying to increase their presence. While at the military academy, the student will quietly remain in touch with his Gulenist mentor, but will be careful not to reveal any religious tendencies that would flag him and deny him promotion. Once placed in a strategic institution, whether in the military, police, judiciary or major media outlet, the graduate continues to receive guidance from a Gulenist mentor, allowing the movement to quietly and directly influence various organs of society. The Gulen movement is also known to influence its young followers to attend universities in cities away from their families where the movement can provide them with free housing. This separation allows the Gulen to step in as a family replacement and strengthen its bond with the student while he or she is away from home.
Gulenist Schools’ Expanding Global Influence
Over the past few decades the Gulen movement has spread to virtually every corner of the globe through its expansive education network. The Gulenist international footprint comprises 1,000 private schools (according to Gulen estimates) spanning 115 countries, including 35 African countries. These Gulenist schools can be found in small towns everywhere from Ethiopia, Bosnia, Cambodia, India, Kazakhstan, Pakistan, Cote d’Ivoire, Azerbaijan — and even the United States, where according to some estimates, the movement runs more than 90 charter public schools in at least 20 states.
Like their counterparts in Turkey, the facilities and quality of instruction at these schools are excellent, making them attractive places for elite families of various ethnicities to send their children to receive an education. Gulenist businessmen provide the majority of these schools’ funding. Such donors have given a portion of their incomes to schools in an assigned region in exchange for help finding business deals. The teachers of the schools are typically devout Gulenist followers willing to live far away from home in foreign lands for what they see as the greater mission of the Gulenist cause.
The curriculum at these schools includes math, science, and Turkish- and English-language instruction, but there is a deeper agenda involved than pedagogy. Graduates of these schools can usually speak Turkish fluently, have been exposed to Turkish culture and history, and are prepared for careers in high places. In regions like Africa and Central Asia in particular, where quality education is difficult to come by, the children of the political elites who attend these schools usually have developed a deep affinity for Turkish culture. As a result, the Gulenists are able to raise a generation of diplomats, security professionals, economists and engineers who are more likely to take Turkish national interests into account when they reach positions of influence.
The Gulenists have made a conscious attempt to avoid the perception that they are proselytizing to students through these schools, however. Lessons in Islam tend to be more prevalent in Gulenist schools where the religion already has a foothold. For example, Islam has a deep history in the Caucasus and Central Asia, though the religion was severely undermined by decades of Communist rule. Many Azerbaijanis, Kazakhs, Uzbeks and other descendants of the Soviet Union do not identify with Islam; the Gulenist schools in these regions aim to revive moderate Islam in the former Soviet territories. This is not to say that the Gulenists are radicalizing these countries, however. In fact, the Gulenists emphasize that the Turkish version of Islam that they teach is moderate in its approach and distinct from the strict Islamic practices of Saudi Arabia and Iran.
As such, the Gulenists are not welcome everywhere they would like to set up. Iran and Saudi Arabia, neither of which wants a foreign strand of Islam influencing its people, have both shut the Gulenist schools out. In the Netherlands, where concerns over the growth of Islam run particularly high, the government has tried to force out Gulenist institutions. For its part, Russia — a natural competitor to Turkey — is extremely wary of this channel of influence, and has reportedly shut down at least 16 Gulenist schools so far. Russia is also heavily reasserting its influence in the former Soviet Union; to this end; it wishes to block the Gulenist movement from expanding in places like Central Asia and the Caucasus. Uzbekistan, with a government paranoid about external influences — especially those tinged with Islam, which they fear will inflame the various militant Islamist groups in the region — banned a number of Gulenist schools in 2000. The Gulenists have had greater success in setting up private high schools and universities in Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Kyrgyzstan. Meanwhile, Azerbaijani officials regularly complain in private about the Gulenist “encroachment” in their country, claiming they do not need Turks to instruct them on how be “good Muslims.” Even Iraq’s Kurdistan Regional Government reportedly shut down four Gulenist institutions in December 2009.
Such resistance is likely to increase as the movement’s profile rises and as countries grow nervous over Turkey’s expanding influence. In places like Africa, however, where countries are desperate for development, Muslims are in abundance, chaotic conditions prevail and foreign competition lacks the intensity it has in strategic battlegrounds like Central Asia, the Gulen movement has far more room to expand its educational, business and political ties….