Some members of Turkey’s military attempted a coup last week and failed. Game over? Not quite. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is arresting thousands of people who he says were connected to the coup. And he’s asking the U.S. to extradite Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen who lives in Pennsylvania and has a strong following here and in Turkey, including people who are now or have been part of the Turkish government. Secretary of State Kerry says he hasn’t gotten a formal request from Turkey but will review any information he receives from its government. Gulen denies he is in any way connected to the failed coup.
Here’s where the charter school connection comes in. Fethullah Gulen is connected indirectly—or directly depending on who you’re talking to—to the Sonoran charter schools and other charters around the country. There are three Sonoran Science Academies in Tucson, including one on the Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, and three Sonoran charters in the Phoenix area.
I began writing about the Sonoran Science Academies and their connections to Gulen in 2010, as did Tim Vanderpool in the Weekly and Tim Steller in the Star. The connection was even the subject of a 60 Minutes investigation in 2012. A group of people around the country believe the charters are too closely connected to Gulen and violate the requirement that public schools have no religious affiliation. They make a strong circumstantial case, but they’ve never proven a direct connection.
What we know is that the Arizona charters have a strong academic reputation, especially in the areas of science and math. We also know that many of their directors and administrators are of Turkish descent, and they have a number of Turkish teachers, some of whom have been brought to the U.S. on H-1B visas for the express purpose of teaching at the schools. We also know that the schools teach Turkish culture, though it may be in a similar way that a French school teaches French culture. Some say the schools have direct links to Gulen, which the schools deny.
Expect to hear more about the schools if the story linking Gulen to the failed coup stays in the news.
This article appears in Jul 14-20, 2016.
one more reason to end the h-1b guest worker program.
Sorry, I’m having trouble understanding what the purpose of this story is.
If I understand it correctly, it says that one of the people being targeted by Erdogan is Gulen, who is connected with the charter schools called “Sonoran Science Academies,” which may have religious connections in violation of public charter funding rules, and that IF Gulen continues to get media coverage in connection with the Turkish coups attempt, we MAY hear more about Gulen, about whom Safier and Vanderpool and Steller have written previously.
Is there “news” here above and beyond the vacuous “recent developments may mean that you will hear more about this topic in the future”? How is this “information,” which could be conveyed in one sentence, worth the time it took to read the four paragraphs Tucson Weekly gave it?
Safier sometimes posts a new piece immediately after the comment stream on one of his previous pieces starts going in a direction not favorable to the interpretation of events he is trying to promote. Perhaps he needed something to post when commenters on this piece, the last he wrote, persisted in strongly criticizing his take on TUSD’s use of 123 funding:
http://www.tucsonweekly.com/TheRange/archives/2016/07/18/another-look-at-tusd-salary-hikes-and-prop-123
Gulen turns out to be the good guy here as Erdogan is moving Turkey towards sharia law and radical Islam. Any wonder Obama asked us to support Erdogan? It’s time you ask what is our President doing.
No one can deny the human toll caused by the recent events in Turkey; however, based on the previous action of Erdogan and the extremely anemic numbers of troops and equipment involved in the purported coup attempt, I question whether this was an actual attempt to overthrow the current Turkish president or an elaborate pretext to justify the mass arrests and reinstatement of the death penalty in Turkey to facilitate the elimination of Erdogan’s enemies. In addition, if taken at face value, these events make it very difficult for the United States to deny surrendering Gulen based on this country’s attempts to have suspects accused of terrorist attacks against the United States extradited.
Apparently, the people of Turkey have demonstrated their preference for an autocrat and a loss of personal freedom. Sad.
I do not think that the ethnicity of the personnel of the Sonoran Science Academies is relevant to any discussion of those schools. They may be good or bad. Their curriculum may be strong or weak. But please leave the ethnic profiling out of it.
Scott Wilson: The h-1b guest worker program brings a great number of technically skilled workers to the U.S. Without those workers augmenting the pool of highly skilled U.S. workers, many U.S. firms would have had a hard time preserving the U.S. position of technological leadership in IT and other areas. If increasing repression in Turkey causes more of those professionals to seek the safer haven of the U.S., then I hope we welcome them. It is Turkey’s loss and our gain.
How about readers on any side or wanting to be informed look at the sources mentioned in paragraph 3, then please come back and post comments; I remember reading about this. Also, my opinion is that the h-1b guest worker program, aside from serving as a bipartisan supported wage-cutting and corporate support measure, does truly help our economy, not least for making up the public’s bipartisan commitment to avoid training K-12 and college kids in skills and trades.
Aaron Johnson: Yes, precisely. If the U.S. had an appropriate level of commitment to education, and generally higher educational standards, then the need for foreign skilled workers would be reduced.
What a disgusting childish and provincial article. Perhaps the Arizona daily independent might be interested having you as a contributor. Next article from David Safier: Women who dress in black might be witches from Norway
I appreciated the article as a “heads up” that the current world news might have some threads locally. Thanks David, and please write up any updates as they occur.
Sometimes the only way I get this kind of info is from the Weekly.
That in itself ought to make you question the accuracy and the angle.
So – how much taxpayer money does this man collect? If he does, then there is merit to this article. If not, then I do not see much relevance. But then, if he is an administrator we will never know because charter schools are not required to fairly report how much they rake in.