Who Is Watching? Turkish Cleric, Accused of Motivating Military Coup, Controls Large Network of Charter Schools in the U.S.

The calls were coming from around the country. A call from Springfield, Mass. was followed by a call from New Orleans, followed by a call from Columbus and also a call from Chicago. The callers were contacting my office at the American Federation of Teachers asking about charter schools in their area operated by Turkish men. We didn’t have any good answers.

By now, the scale and ambition of Fethullah Gulen and his followers are in the news daily with the fallout of the apparent coup attempt in Turkey this summer. I'd be lying if I said I knew how to interpret the events in Turkey. However, I am not the least surprised by the direct assertions by Republic of Turkey officials that Gulen—a nearly 80-year-old mullah living in the Poconos since 1997—is behind a large network of charter schools here in the United States. This fact has taken far too long to pierce the headlines, but it has now become a standard paragraph in both international and domestic coverage of the confusing events in Turkey....
http://www.alternet.org/education/what-happens-gulen-charter-turkish-schools