Was U.S.-based and CIA-backed Mullah Fethullah Gülen (shown) behind the July coup attempt, as President Recep Erdogan, Turkey’s authoritarian strongman, claims?
Since the failed military coup on July 15, President Erdogan has been carrying out a massive purge of the military, police, and civilian government. Reportedly, he has suspended nearly 70,000 suspected opponents from their jobs and arrested 10,000 or more. Erdogan’s harsh crackdown on all opposition, including increased censorship, has resulted in severe condemnation from Western politicians and media critics. However, Russia, which has been one of Turkey’s main enemies, has played the coup attempt to its favor, helping smooth relations between Moscow and Ankara.
Russia was one among the first countries to officially condemn the coup attempt, a move the besieged Erdogan regime clearly appreciated. “We thank the Russian authorities, particularly President Putin,” Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu told Haberturk TV. “We have received unconditional support from Russia, unlike other countries,” he said, taking an obvious backhanded slap at the United States and the European Union.
Erdogan and his government spokesmen and Turkish media supporters not only fault the United States and EU for criticizing his response to the coup effort, but also charge that a U.S./NATO-supported Turkish network guided by a CIA-backed radical cleric, Mullah Fethullah Gülen, was the force behind the failed coup.
The Mysterious Mullah With Mountains of U.S. Cash
Unfortunately, these charges from the Erdogan camp are not merely America-bashing propaganda; there are plenty of facts and puzzle pieces that give substance to the accusations. Put these together with the recent history of State Department globalists in the Bush and Obama administrations sponsoring “Arab Spring” regime changes in Egypt, Libya, Iraq, Syria, and elsewhere — changes that have installed extremist Islamist regimes — and the Erdogan charges do not appear as wild as some regional “experts” insist.
Some very serious questions begged to be asked … and answered, such as: Who is Mullah Fethullah Gülen, and why has this Turkish national been given apparent immunity? Who has assisted Mullah Gülen in building a vast, multi-billion dollar “educational” empire of Islamic Charter Schools across the United States and spanning the globe — and why? Was a “Gülen Network” backed by the CIA and the Obama-Clinton-Kerry State Department responsible for the recent coup effort?
One of the most qualified independent experts on the Byzantine convolutions of Turkey’s political jumble is Turkish-American Sibel Dinez Edmonds, the former FBI translator and famous whistleblower who exposed massive security breaches and intelligence coverups. On her BoilingFrogsPost website, Mrs. Edmonds has been asking these important questions and providing disturbing answers.
As far back as 2010, she was pointing out the alarming influence that Gülen was being given throughout the United States with his burgeoning network of Islamic madrasas disguised as charter schools. “The Controversial Muslim preacher has now extended his tentacles into schools in the United States, where he controls and operates more than 100 charter schools within a calculatively set up maze of dubious NGOs,” she reported in October of 2010. “Fethullah Gulen, whose organizations’ net worth is estimated to be somewhere between $22 billion and $50 billion, owns and operates over three hundred Madrasas around the world, including Pakistan, Central Asia, and the Caucasus,” she continued. “While Gulen’s suspicious and secretive Madrasas have been shut down and or restrained in countries such as Russia, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan, based on these governments’ justified suspicions that his schools had more than just education on their agendas, his rapidly and secretively expanding charter school empire here in the US has gone quite unnoticed and unacknowledged.”
“In less than a decade Gulen’s Islamic network in the US has established over 100 publicly funded charter schools in 25 states,” Edmonds reported. “What makes this eyebrow raising phenomenon a very disturbing case is the fact that despite official documents and publicly available data Fethullah Gulen is going out of his way to deny his connections to these schools. The question is why?” Why indeed? And the follow-up question, nearly six years later, is why is this allowed to continue? Why are influential globalists — the usual suspects from the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) — always ready and willing to protect, aid, and abet his efforts, whether in Turkey, here in this country, or around the globe?
35,000 students in 25 states
An article in USA Today on August 17, 2010, noted the extensiveness of the Gülen madrasas that have silently sprung up, largely unnoticed:
They have generic, forward-sounding names like Horizon Science Academy, Pioneer Charter School of Science and Beehive Science & Technology Academy.
Quietly established over the past decade by a loosely affiliated group of Turkish-American educators, these 100 or so publicly funded charter schools in 25 states are often among the top-performing public schools in their towns.
The schools educate as many as 35,000 students — taken together they’d make up the largest charter school network in the USA — and have imported thousands of Turkish educators over the past decade.
But the success of the schools at times has been clouded by nagging questions about what ties the schools may have to a reclusive Muslim leader in his late 60s living in exile in rural Pennsylvania.
In view of the increasing incidence of Islamist terror attacks and extremist activity, it is reasonable, is it not, to question the wisdom of supporting, encouraging, and promoting his “Gülen movement” here and abroad — even though the political correctness police, no doubt, will shriek “intolerance!” and “hate speech!”
However, U.S. officials have not only provided sanctuary for Gulen here in the United States and allowed him to build a huge and prosperous network, they have also masterminded his network’s coup efforts, according to Edmonds. In her July 24 report Edmonds states:
The three most important regiments involved in the Turkey Attempted Coup plot and implementation have been part (members) of NATO’s Rapid Deployable Corps (NRDC) since 2003.
A group of plotters of the failed Turkish Coup Attempt used a WhatsApp group to communicate with each other. Based on well-documented information and established identities gathered from these intercepted communications, at least three out of the five coupist regiments were (and still are) part of NATO’s Rapid Deployable Corps. Further, the group used the emblem and slogan used by NATO’s Rapid Deployable Corps: “Peace at home, peace in the world.”
The intercepted communications also expose the role of the CIA-Gulen network within Turkey’s police force, and how it readily welcomed and aided the Failed Coup Attempt.
Edmonds’ BoilingFrogsPost also notes that among Gülen’s most influential defenders are the (CFR-laden) New York Times and former State Department official and Carnegie Endowment for International Peace president Morton Abramowitz (CFR).
Are any members of Congress curious enough or courageous enough to begin asking the obvious questions and demanding answers from President Obama? So far, apparently not.
Photo of Fethullah Gülen: AP Images
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