CLASSIC: The Gulen Movement

What do private schools and revolution have in common? The answer may surprise you. Join the guys as they bring on their intern Sam Teegardin and for a firsthand look at an strange and insidious conspiracy reaching from the Eastern US seaboard and journeying through locations across the world to fundamentally rock the political foundations of the Turkish state.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Everybody. In this classic episode we are We actually had
a friend of ours who was an intern at the time,
come on the show. It's not intern Steve from the
n Essay, it's our intern Sam, who still works with
us and shared a very weird story about a private
school he went too. I don't even want to spoil

(00:22):
anything in this episode. You can read the title. It's
about the Gulan movement. Check it out. From UFOs to
psychic powers and government conspiracies, history is riddled with unexplained events.
You can turn back now or learn the stuff they
don't want you to know. Welcome back to the show.

(00:53):
Ladies and gentlemen. My name is Nul. They call me Ben,
our compatriot, Our third Amigo's fallen in the battle. Yes,
Matt Frederick has been temporarily afflicted with a virus, which
he assures us is neither terminal nor at this point contagious. However,

(01:14):
he's taking some R and R and will be returning
very soon. He's with us in spirit as soon as
he convalesces, Yes, as soon as he convalesces and reconstitutes.
We're also, of course, joined by our superproducer Trista McNeil
and most importantly, you are here, which makes this stuff

(01:35):
they don't want you to know. No, this is a
little bit of a different episode for you and I,
isn't it. Yeah, it's a little I don't know. Did
you ever? That's kind of the buffer. I feel a
little bit exposed way you're looking at me. Did did
you ever go to a Did you ever go to

(01:56):
a charter school? I went to a summer camp and
to us summercamp. It's the same thing as I guess,
it's not the same thing. You're gonna have to teach
me about charter schools. I understand it, like basic view
of what charter schools are, but we're gonna have to
go a little micro. But no, Ben, I did not.
I went to a magnet school. Yeah, yes, it's not
the same thing, but it is, you know, publicly funded.

(02:18):
Technically it's a public school, but there's like, well, yeah,
what does a man school get in unless you meet
certain criteria like you. I had to sing happy birthday.
Real well, Tristan actually went to the same magnet school.
Oh yeah, peak behind the cart and me and Tristan
are old friends, a couple of magnets. Yeah, yeah, we
had magnetic personalities that right, I played the violin. I

(02:39):
think Tristan just painted or something. I don't know what
Triston didn't. Yeah, he's an artist. Yeah, he's in the
jazz band probably, But no, what's a charter school? Yeah,
so as as people know, regardless of what country you
live in, there are probably different specialized versions of schools,
and they are not separated by a level alone. In

(03:01):
the US, we have multiple types of schools. They are
magnet schools, right, type of public institution. There are, of
course public schools, they're private schools, they're religious schools, and
there are charter schools. Okay, so charter schools, just like
a public school, offer free tuition to children who take

(03:21):
these state mandated exams, but they're subject to fewer rules, regulations,
and statutes than traditional schools. They also receive less public
funding and it's usually like a fixed amount for pupil
isn't a big part of it though, That kids don't
have to be zoned, like, they don't have to live
specifically in the area that's zoned for that particular school, right, Yeah,

(03:42):
And they can be nonprofit. They can also be for profit,
so they have they have wide variations within that within
that field. And I know people are probably wondering, right,
You're probably wondering, why are the guys talking about charter schools?
Promise you there's a payoff, and it's a big, weird one.
It's yeah, it's really weird. So right now, there are

(04:05):
a little bit less than seven thousand charter schools in
forty two states and DC. That's of twenty and sixteen,
and they have about three million students. They've been growing
like gangbusters, well, especially into the current administration and the
new Secretary of Education. Isn't school choice? Isn't that a
big part of charter schools? Vouchers? Yeah, yeah, school vouchers, Yeah,

(04:27):
nail on the head. There's a big there's a big
move and there has been for a number of years
to offer that choice. Because you know, for anyone who
ever has ever bought a house, one thing real estate
agents love to bring up is the school system and
there will be a premium placed on a property because
of the zip code. Absolutely right, And this is something
familiar to anyone who has children and out yeah, I

(04:52):
said to anyone who has parents, Yeah, this issue has
or this practice of sending children to charter schools has
its proponents and its critics. Oh, we should also mention,
like a magnet school, they may provide a specialized curriculum. Right,
So you had you had a magnet school that focused

(05:13):
on arts, I would say, yeah, yeah, they could also
focus on mathematics, on stem training, or on vocational training.
We're not here to argue the pros or cons about
charter schools. However, our special guests today came to came
to us off the air with an amazing and very

(05:37):
strange story about charter schools, not just here in Georgia,
but throughout the nation. And you may have heard us
mention mentioned this guy on the show before way back
in the day. But ladies and gentlemen, Noel and I
would like to officially introduce you to stuff they don't
want you to know. As intern Sam T. Garden, Greetings everyone, Hey,

(06:00):
thanks for coming on the show. So seriously, glad I
could be here. Do you agree with our description of
charter schools? That seemed about right? I think it's very
accurate from my experience. Yes, Okay, Now, Sam, you went
to a charter school for a time, and when you
when you were at this charter school, it turned out
that not everything was as it seemed at the surface. Right,

(06:23):
that's correct, there are there are some things overall that
is we learned that, hey, that's a little bit off,
that's a little bit weird. Could you give us just
some examples, some initial examples. So some initial examples were
the high turnover rated teachers. We'd have some teachers we
very much liked, but suddenly they move on. There was
an international kind of themed like instead of like a
cheerlead group, we would have Turkish dance. We'd have some

(06:47):
kind of interesting, very big science projects and other things
that we would go to competitions with. But our teachers
did a lot of the work. And then you come
to the science fair one day and you'd see a
giant test the coil in the middle of the gymnasium
and be like, I don't think middle schoolers built that
things like that. Let's learn a little bit about the teachers.

(07:09):
Could you describe some of your instructors. So some of
my instructors were a mix of American teachers that they
hired from around the area and a lot of international
teachers from outside of the countries, more specifically from Turkey.
These teachers, a lot of these teachers were very good.
They were all very intelligent people, highly qualified, but some
of them were overqualified and kind of didn't speak the

(07:33):
language as well as you hope. For example, I had
one teacher who was had a degree in believe it
was atomic engineering or atomic energy, but taught like the
kind of the feel wellness class, understand your emotions class.
It's like, I think you're you're you're way more qualified
for this. You're very intelligent, because that sort of like
when they get the gym teacher to also teach you know,

(07:53):
driver's ed exactly exactly, a little bit a little bit difference.
We didn't. She never taught me how to build a
nuclear reactor, which I was a little bit sad about. Okay.
Or we'd have some teachers who didn't really talk to
us very much, and all of our work was just
like worksheets that they would hand out and we would
hand them back and we didn't have a lot of interaction.
It was it was strange, we're creeping up on something.

(08:14):
I think we should go ahead and just okay, this
is a particular type of chart, not not a type necessarily,
but almost a chain, I guess you could call it.
I think network, Network Network, because they all had different
names that weren't related to the brand, shall we say,
which is, uh, how do you pronounce it? Thelan movement.
So they were called things like the busy Bee Academy

(08:38):
for you know, talented youths and things like usually would
a high emphasis on math and science, and like the
one you attended was Fulton Science Academy. Okay, so how
could you argue with a name like that? But I
think you're absolutely correct. No, that's what we need to
establish because while these while this network of hundreds of
charter schools may have seemed unrelated, were in truth much

(09:01):
more like limbs on a branch or fingers on a hand,
and the hand is something that we just mentioned, the
Ghulan movement this, Yeah, it's true. It sounds crazy and
no offense, Sam, but uh Nole, Matt and I were
pretty skeptical at first. Oh, I would have been you
think you were skeptical? I was in it, and my

(09:21):
mother was coming to me like, yeah, we might need
to change schools. I'm like, what are you talking about?
And then she started going into this stuff and I
was like are you are you okay? So, so the
Ghulan movement is an Islamic transnational movement led by a
religious figure from Turkey named Fetula Gulan, and he lives

(09:42):
in exile in Pennsylvania currently and the Poconos. Yes, just so.
And he uh he is considered by some to be
the second most powerful man in Turkey or formerly the
second most powerful, from between one and four million followers. Yeah. Yeah,
not just in the US and Turkey, but across the world.

(10:03):
Because the school that Sam went to turned out is
one of these nodes in the network and not in
any way rare. That's the scariest part because because this
this school functions as what the opponents would call a

(10:26):
affront or a almost a month away to move money exactly.
And this this movement, Like most people, if you're listening,
when you hear something described as a movement, at what
point do you does it get to be a movement? Yeah? Right?
And is numbers game good? Is it bad? Right? I

(10:48):
mean four people is a movement? TECHNI right, right together
in a line, you can look pretty intimidating. A group
of four walking. I think you hit the nail on
the head there. That's group of people. I feel like
you need at least eight to twelve to be a movement.
See I'm I'm really joking, but even that seems low
to me. Like a movement needs to be what like

(11:10):
a like a revolution, like a mini h Right, there's
a change. I wonder if there's a counter terrorism definition
of it. We could. It's a term that gets thrown
on politics a lot like that. During the last election.
You know, our president kept referring to his campaign as
a movement, right, And I guess a lot of supporters

(11:32):
of political candidates would be, like the so called Bernie Bros.
Would be, I guess a movement. There's definitely a number here.
Let's talk a little bit more, just to paint the
scenery of what the Ghoulon movement is. These people who
are making money off these schools and employing each other
in these schools. That's those those two things are all true.

(11:55):
They are very true. They be very careful not to disparage,
of course, where we're not trying to disparage, because a
lot of what the school does, at least there's I
had a very positive experience for a very large portion
of it. It was only after you kind of pulled
back the curtain saw the whole machine that it really
became a problem. So the movement itself has been characterized

(12:16):
as Islam in a less hardline way or a less
rigid application the nice parts of Islam, right, So it's
technology friendly. They want to work with current existing social structures.
They encourage interfaith conversations, and that's that's a big deal

(12:38):
to a lot of people. But also, as you can see,
it could be considered beyond controversial, you know, anathema of sorts.
I think it's more because it's kind of a front
for what their kind of actual main goal is. You
actually go in there. Yeah, tell us a little bit.
I have a quote from Googlan himself from this, it's

(12:58):
more kind of it seems more insidious because at first glance,
it's like, oh, it's a guy who's about interfaith dialogue
and who was very much into math and science. Why
wouldn't you want one of him opening up a school
in your neighborhood. It makes it like it makes sense.
But here's just a quote from him. You must move
in the arteries of the system without anyone noticing your
existence until you reach all the power centers. You must

(13:21):
wait until such a time as you have gotten all
the state power until you have brought to your side
the power of the constitutional institutions. So that seems a
little bit, a little bit kind of insidious, right, Yeah,
that reminds me, you know what, that reminds me of
back when we looked at communist worries and communist witch

(13:42):
hunts in the fifties, where people would talk about a
so called fifth column, you know, and a domestic sleeper
force of sorts. Oh, we do need to say, by
the way, that as we as we look at this, yes,
this is an Islamic movement and it does touch on Islam,
but we're not We're not bashing anybody for their religious beliefs.

(14:06):
We do we do have a little bit of foreshadowing here, sayman,
I really appreciate that you put that in there, because,
like the opponents say, it's possible that the Ghulan movement
is not all it seems. It's not just according to
its detractors. It is not just an attempt to make

(14:29):
a more friendly version of a religion and then to
build schools. There's an agenda at play. Opponents have labeled
members of the Gulan community as secret missionaries and those
who are sympathetic to the movement, describe it more as

(14:51):
a civil society organization. Well, one point I read in
the Atlantic article that you sent me about it, which
was fantastic, was that there was no evidence whatsoever that
there was any kind of Islamic indoctrination or radicalization built
into the curriculum, and to the point where if that

(15:11):
became an issue with certain detractors, it would come off
as being xenophobic. Yeah, So that that was really fascinating
to me because it's clearly not about any kind of
radicalization in that respect, and it was very inter faith,
almost friendly. It reminded me of like Unitarianism or something
like that, where it's not obviously it's secular. It wasn't secular, though,

(15:33):
I mean, what were there religious aspects to it? I'm
a little trying to get around it. Here's from my
experience in the school, there never really was anything that
really kind of made religionous center point of everything. It
was very much all about education and more than that.
There it was definitely trying to make a have all
the students have a positive kind of view of Turkish
culture in Turkey in general. So I think it was

(15:54):
more about the trying the culture rather than religion. Though
I will say that at my school, and I can't
say that this is at all schools, but not There
definitely was a prayer room that was there, and they
it was open to all students. But it seemed to me,
at least from what I was, that only students of
the Islamic students were made aware of the prayer room.

(16:15):
They weren't really, we weren't really made aware of it.
If we wanted to followed that ourselves. What was the
reason that you sought out the school or how did
it come to your attention? And is there some something
in your family's background that made this appealing to your
parents in some way? Or it sure did. My grandfather
taught at a charter school, and though that charter school

(16:36):
is outside of our range for what it would be
easier to go to school every day, we thought, why not?
These things seem very interesting and teachers outside the curriculum,
and we're already kind of seeing us slump in the
schools near our areas. Why not give it a shot.
We came to the school that the test scores were
really good. It was an international school which promoted multiculturism,

(16:57):
and which is like, oh, that's really good. My mom
definitely was very much a pro for that, and I
was very interested too. Were like it had a lot
to do with the appeal of a very good school
with great test scores, and it had a lot to
do with dealing with other cultures, becoming more extempting, being
very multicultural, and just kind of getting more experiences from
my young, very kind of isolated American kid, just like

(17:19):
I didn't really have to deal with a lot of
other cultures just from where I was. So my parents thought,
let's let's kind of immerse you into it a little
bit and probably a great language classes, better opportunities to
explore things that a public school might not be able
to concentrate on. You actually went to Turkey as part

(17:39):
of your time at this academy. That's very true. That's
the first point where we started to pull things together,
like something doesn't quite add up here. That's when we
started kind of digging into the school and when we
started getting kind of stonewalled by the administration. Could you
tell us a little bit about your trip. So the
trip when it was first announced, it was over spring break,

(18:01):
ten days, ten nights, all expense paid trip. All you
have to do is pay eight hundred dollars as a
student and eleven hundred dollars as a parent, and for
going to Turkey for over a week. That's that's really good.
So we're like, of course we've got to go. But
as it approaches, we're like, can we see the itinerary
and they're like, no, no, we don't have the itinerary.
And then as we keep going closer and closer each day,

(18:22):
they're like, we still, you still don't have the itinerary.
If we don't have when we're not going to go,
So eventually like oh no, no, no, here you go.
But even then it was just a list of the
places that we were all going to go, and it
wasn't until like a few days before we found out, oh,
the students and the parents will be separate, because you
assume that as the parents would come and help shaper

(18:43):
and all the kids, because there's going to be a
lot of us going, but we would be even on
different flights, in different cities, and without any way real
way to contact or communicate with each other. M So
there's already something that seems kind of weird, right, And
your your mother is one of the first people who
begins to put some pieces together. That's right, you ran

(19:06):
into another charter school too, correct, that's right. We u this.
My mother was on an airplane traveling to another one
of the cities and then she met a Oh look,
there was an American teacher in front of her. She's like, hey,
how are you doing. So they started talking and they're like, wait,
so you're on the same trip. We've gone to a
lot of the same places, but we're You're also a
charter school, but we're not affiliated. That's strange. So they

(19:28):
start talking about that. But guess what, the principle of
that other school comes over and switches seats with her,
so she can't talk with my mom. And the strange
part is later that trip they found it. They met
each other again at the same hotel they were both
staying yet and that was a lot of weirdness from her.
But now there's also some weirdness going on with me.

(19:49):
So I'm we're going around having the time of our lives,
seeing ancient Byzantine ruins, going to the Grand Mosque. It
was amazing, going through some bazaars. But then there's some
weird stuff that started to happen like we would never
really know where we were going to go stay for
the night. They were basically kind of calling other friends
in their in their network saying, hey, do you have
a room for this many kids? This and the other thing.

(20:09):
And so this is the really weird thing. Now you
have to understand that we were a math and science school,
so you can and we were. We were some very
nerdy kids, and I take pride in that, but I
understand that the kind of stereotypes that go with us. Sure,
So all of a sudden, we're at this kind of
a park and all these Turkish girls start coming over
from another charter school and they start being very kind

(20:30):
of uh interested in all the guys that are going
to our school, and that just didn't add up. That's
the thing like that, that's the part. That's the part
we're like, wait a minute, why this doesn't make any sense.
And it turns out later we actually went to that
exact school. There was a friend. It's like a sister
school in Turkey. We're like, oh, what are the odds
of that. After this trip, which sounds like it was

(20:51):
a great trip, everyone we met was fantastic Turkey, The
beautiful country, got to see amazing historical places. It was
a solutely the trip of the lifetime, if not a
little bit strange. Yeah, And so when you returned, when
you and your mother returned to the States, she began
to investigate to in hopes of connecting some dots and

(21:15):
finding some answers. And this is where the story takes
a bit of a twist, and we learn that this
charter school network and the Ghulan movement may have much
much more to it than you would originally suspect. But
we'll only learn that after a word from our sponsor.

(21:43):
Upon your return, you learn, you and your mother learn
that not only is this charter school run by members
of the organization known as the Ghulan Movement or his
met in Turkish, but also learn more about what that
movement is, what that movement is really quote unquote up to, right,

(22:08):
And that's what the kind of interesting part was. My
mom when she first was investigating, She's like, this is
just sort of weird. She's trying to get to the
bottom of it, understand it. So she started talking to
these really good journalists, like really high up there. These
weren't these weren't yahoos and they're like, oh wow, this
is really interesting. This is compared to something else I'm
going on. If you're willing to talk to me about it,

(22:29):
I'd love to have the information. But don't worry. I
won't use your name. Okay, don't worry. It happened multiple times.
She's like, that's really strange. Well, I don't care if
they use my name. What's there's nothing to be so
sinister about this. But that's when she starts digging and
starts seeing the stuff that the move that the school
does that you wouldn't necessarily put on the brochure. So

(22:52):
this is stuff like this is stuff that has been proven.
This is so using a lot of the tax dollars
to build their schools, but always doing it very cheaply.
Somehow it's coming in under budget, and that money just
sort of disappears. There's they start using construction companies that
you find out, oh wait, they're owned by people who
were either on the board of the schools or on
the boards of one of the sisters schools. They start

(23:14):
using a lot of the money for kind of political
contributions and to start taking a bunch of politicians on
the same trip that I went on said exactly, a
lot of self dealing, and then when they did go
for outside help. There's several cases where they wouldn't they
just wouldn't pay the contractors. Wasn't the school the actual
or maybe maybe it wasn't yours specifically, but one of
the ones in Fulton County was quite in debt, that

(23:35):
is correct? Yeah, And is that because of that kind
of stuff like not paying local contractors? Like who were
they in debt too? I mean, if a lot of
the self dealing is going on, that would be harder
to trace, I guess. But were they not? Because I
know that they get taxpayer money to fund the school,
So was there an issue with their use of taxpayer
money as well? Definitely something to do with the use

(23:57):
of the taxpayer money that kind of moving around. I
know there was a couple, if not with the local one,
but in several examples, there was lawsuits from contractors like
you didn't we built your school, you didn't pay us
the money after that, and they would just kind of
stop talking to them and they were just ghosts on
them exactly, which doesn't really work when you have a
big contract with someone, when you owe them a lot

(24:17):
of money. In a permanent address. Yes, and on the surface,
they were doing their job. You even you as an insider,
say it's it was a good school experience. Test scores
were good, the teachers were receptive, and you know, good
it was. The whole environment was pretty solid. Yeah. I
think here's the thing. There are some teachers who were
very much part of the movement, and there are some

(24:39):
teachers who were there because of the benefits that I
gave I see. But one of the things, they brought
a lot of people over with hib visas, which that
means they couldn't find hire someone who was qualified locally.
You can only apply for that if you can't do that.
So apparently they couldn't find a lot of a lot
of teachers math signs and English teachers around in George

(25:00):
for some reason. And a lot of those teachers like
they would come over. But part of the agreement is
like you'll get paid this amount, but you have to
give like this much back to the movement. You essentially
have to tithe to his myth exactly. So that's a
that's another thing that makes it sound as if things
are financially not on the up and up. And we

(25:21):
know that we know that historically the connection between religion
and money. Not to shout out our previous episode too hard,
but the connection between religion and money is very very important,
and often it's a love hate relationship. It's a fine
line too where it like become Obviously you need money
to continue any large organization, or you have overhead and

(25:44):
you have infrastructure, and you have to pay employees just
like you would any other company or organization. But when
it starts to get out of hand, like with the
Creflo dollar type, you know, where you're using tithe money
to finance your jet, or as in this situation where
we see the leader of this movement using some of

(26:05):
these funds that were being generated to finance political revolution. Yes. Yes,
But one other thing I just have to mention about
the school yeah, and especially really into the money, is
that a lot of the really good American teachers never
really got promoted. Well, some of the teachers who were
who very quickly were rotated in didn't have the best

(26:28):
grasp on the language and basically basically worked off of
worksheets where they often got promoted and got and were
moved around in that sort of thing. But while they
were kind of ignored, and it was especially a problem
with a lot of the women teachers. They were not
as they were not given the same amount of respect.

(26:49):
And I know that that led to a bunch of
the teachers leaving there and forming their own charter school,
a charter school revolution as well as above, so below
reminds me of supersymmetry, because Noel, you you dropped a
very important line there that I want to make sure

(27:09):
everybody listening understands. You said political revolution. Well, I mean
it's you know, there is evidence, as we're going to discuss,
that the leader of this movement was not only you know,
hiding funds and sort of washing money that was being
diverted to other things. One of those things was an

(27:29):
attempt to overthrow the government of Turkey. Yes, just so,
so this uh, this movement that promotes itself as as
a moderate interpretation of Islam in two thousand and sixteen,
all about non violence, all about yeah, let's emphasize that part. Yes,

(27:51):
in two thousand and sixteen, the government of Turkey requested
Ghulan's extradition from Pennsylvania and continues to do so because
they say that the Ghulam movement was directly responsible for
a failed coup attempt in the Turkish government. And this

(28:11):
is where things start to get interesting because if we
follow the money, and I think that was very smart
for you to construct that that list for us. If
we follow the money, then I'm sure some of us
listening are thinking, well, problem number one. This would be
federal tax dollars supporting a religious movement right or religious

(28:36):
education possible right, So that could get sticky. But more importantly,
this becomes federal tax dollars to some degree unknowingly supporting
and intervention in the affairs of a sovereign nation, which
is in some cases considered grounds for starting a war.

(28:57):
This is a big and range deal we've got. You
can see if you if you check for the movement,
you can see several of the back and forth allegations
along with criticism on both sides where people call the
current president Erdegon a despot, right or a dictator. So

(29:22):
in twenty sixteen, on July fifteenth, just a little over
a year ago, now there this coup occurred. It was
led by a military faction operating outside the traditional chain
of command. And you know a lot of revolutions occur
when some like minded higher up military officials get together,

(29:44):
maybe with a wealthy aristocratic family on the outs or something.
They want to have the promise that if they succeed,
they will have support, you know what I mean? Yeah, exactly,
because it's it's much harder to stabilize and main tainous
a country, you know. It's it's it's still really hard
to overthrow a status quo, but it's much more difficult

(30:08):
to institute a new and lasting one. So destroying something's easy,
building something up as much more different. Yeah, yeah, that's
that's a really good way to say it. So the
when this coup occurs, ord Gone and COUM believe that
this was entirely done or orchestrated by the Ghula movement
and therefore by Ghulan himself. So in the days and

(30:31):
weeks after the coup there was a massive crackdown purges
affecting all entities affiliated with the Ghulan movement individuals, businesses,
but bigger than that newspapers, schools, universities, and these are
now known as the two thousand and sixteen to twenty
seventeen purges. It's interesting you mentioned newspapers because one of

(30:54):
the thing that's kind of looked looked into by my
mom is they were all herself and all the other
kind of charter trips were all taken to this one
newspaper in Turkey that was very it's a very large newspaper,
but it's very much kind of in the Ghoulan sphere,
and that was one of the first ones that was
purged after the revolution failed. Let's let's look at some

(31:16):
numbers here, because this is some stuff that that definitely
caught me by surprise. During the coup, over three hundred
people were killed, more than two thousand were injured. Multiple
government buildings were bombed from the air, so whomever was
orchestrating this did have access to military aircraft and there

(31:39):
were mass arrests afterwards, which we mentioned. At least forty
thousand people were detained, and at least ten thousand soldiers,
almost three thousand judges, fifteen thousand educators and they were suspended,
and twenty one thousand teachers working in private institutions had

(32:00):
their licenses revoked, probably because they taught at charter school
the charter schools in the region Yea and to date,
just on the basis of alleged connections to Gulan over
one hundred thousand people have been arrested or fired, and

(32:21):
this was all happy. You know, It's it's kind of crazy, right.
You were part of this unknowingly, and if I'm not mistaken,
that ended up involving quite a bit more than you
would have expected at this point or that you bargained
for overall. Right, Absolutely, we're going to get into that
after one more quick little ad break and we're back. So, Sam,

(32:45):
you had been out of this school for a time now,
a couple of years, that's right. I was well into
high school, right, and one day you get a knock
on the door, and the door was two FBI special
agents and they wanted to talk with me and my
mom about our experience with this whole, this whole charter
school chain. It seems like they were very interested. Now

(33:06):
of course, um, they told me when they left they
would either confirm or deny that they were even there.
But I can say that they were there, and they
either they were or are still investigating the whole charter
school thing. But the last thing you expect is to
have the FBI knock on your door. I can tell
you that, yeah, especially because you know you're you're stand

(33:27):
up kid, at least at that point, you know, I've
committed no federal crimes. You've committed no federal crimes or
state crimes to my knowledge, all around mensch you are
into like pop culture and stuff, and so to have
the FBI come and knock and it's got to be
on one level terrifying but also another level maybe kind
of cool. Oh, it's it's very much both. On one hand,

(33:50):
it's just it's like, have I ever done anything lot
wrong in my life? No? But what if I did,
I didn't know it totally? Oh yeah, I have stress
dreams about that kind of stuff, where like the FBI
has been tracking me for years for something I did
that I didn't even know. We've been looking at your
Amazon purchases and it turns out you can build an
atomic weapon, right, Or they're like precriming me where they're like,

(34:11):
you know, putting together based on my browsing habits and
my Amazon by purchases. They know that I will eventually
commit a horrible crime. And that's that's a new oather.
That's that's topic for another episode, But that's common in
this country. Um, you're right, that would be a great episode.
But that's common in this country for even the most
squeaky clean, law abiding person to feel that little, that

(34:32):
little knife, that stab of fear when they see, for instance,
the lights on a on a cop car turn on
behind you. I mean not even that. If I'm just
driving along the road and a cop car passes me,
I know, I immediately slow down a little bit and
square up in my driving ten and two. Yeah, So
the take it to the next logical extreme. What was

(34:52):
it like when thebi and what kind of stuff do
they talk to you about? If you can even go
into that, I can go into a little bit, but um,
we're right. When they came into the door, I absolutely
felt like I was underdressed. I felt I was very
much squared up, like yes, sir, yes, ma'am, got a
steering wheel, put your hands on exactly, exactly, send to
the seat. But well, a lot of what they asked

(35:13):
me about was basically the about the teachers who went there,
about the kind of quality of the school. Um, anything
that I noticed was off some of the places I
went to when I was in my on the Turkish trip,
stuff like that. M And were there any questions that
they asked that specifically stuck out to you as a

(35:34):
strange line of questioning. I think the strangest line of
questioning is asking how I felt about the school, how
I felt about the thing. It was very much trying
to get the kind of a personal read on my experience,
if I was hiding anything, if if I I honestly
think they were trying to see if I was indoctrinated,
because I know one of the kind of tasting the

(35:55):
tactics they did. Now I've gotten this from some of
my friends, and I feel like some of the stuff
is a feeling I have. I've got no evidence to
back it up, but I think some of our test
scores were inflated. Now I can't confirm any of that,
but I also know some of my friends where they're like,
they thought they did well on a test, they did poorly,
and they're like, here, come do some tutoring with us.

(36:15):
They tutor them, Oh, look now you're getting good grades.
Even though if you actually check the stuff back and forth,
guess what it was the same. It was the same, wide,
same answers. Well, because it makes them seem like they
are they can absolutely help you. Then it also adds
more stuff too. It's kind of like the thing with
the projects at the school that gets so much a
teacher help. Yeah, it gets a lot more machine, It

(36:38):
gets more renowned to the school, which leads to more awards,
which leads to more state money and to more people
who want legitimate school exactly. Ultimately, ultimately it's a lot
more legitimate. If anything, it seems a little bit culty.
If I had to say anything else some of the stuff. Now,
I again, I need to make this very clear. I've
had some of the best teachers I've ever had. There

(36:59):
A lot of them weren't Turkish teachers, and even the
ones that weren't were they were all very good. But
I didn't it's kind of hard not to ignore some
of these things after you see the whole big picture.
So do you I mean, agave, we're in the realm
of conjecture here, but do you think this is the
kind of thing where this gentleman started this chain of

(37:20):
schools with good intentions and then gradually started thinking, huh,
maybe I could use it for this because even the
foundation is super solid and it's a real school. I
bother making it that good and like actually paying such
attention to detail. You know, the most fronts. That's why
they call it a front because there's nothing there. It's

(37:40):
just like a facade. Right. Well, I think that's kind
of the point, because it's more than just a front.
I feel like if you do anything, it's something that
that's kind of part of the legitimacy. And I think
it goes to that quote I said earlier. It wants
people to kind of infiltrate because even if even afterwards,
I definitely have a lot more positive view on Turkey

(38:01):
than I did before, even with all this stuff that happened,
I definitely have a greater appreciation for it. So if
you do things right and you actually start converting people,
when I converting seems like it's a charge way, sure,
but trying to get people acclimated to Turkey, to their
culture to liking you that, I think that's basically it's
a I think it's a have your cake and eat
it too sort of situation. Yeah, it's a soft diplomacy,

(38:24):
which is a core part of many strategies from different
state actors in China. China, for instance, has in the
US the Confucius Institutes, which are all intent on educating
people regard educating people in the West regarding Chinese culture.
I do want to say before anybody writes in on this,

(38:45):
that Gulan himself claimed the recording he is on He
is on record. You can hear a recording of Gulan
saying the quotation that Sam read at the top. Gulan,
for his part, claims that the recording was all which
we know, we know can happen. But it's the easiest

(39:06):
thing in the world without its sounding. I mean, it's
getting better. Like I think there's like a I want
to say, Adobe was kind of shopping around or like
showing off at some conferences this like photoshop for audio thing, Yeah,
where you can piece together, you know, and I'm an
audio engineer. Yeah, and I don't have that. Yeah, but
I heard some examples and it's pretty wild, but certainly

(39:27):
not wasn't available here. I think the thing for me
about the whole thing is the message of definitely tolerance
and getting kids excited about math and science is very good,
and it faces volu that's very nice, But I think
that I don't really feel like that it's that genuine
for the basic reason because when we went and asked
my principle at the time, oh are you related to

(39:49):
these other charter schools. He said, no, we're completely unaffiliated.
But even with a few Google searches, we found out
that's not true. If they would have just acknowledged there, like, yeah,
we're part of the largest network of charter schools in
americ over one hundred fifty schools, we probably would have ended.
They're like, oh, that's fine. But the fact that they
are trying to hide it, and for good reason, because
it holds all these things about double dealing and contributions

(40:12):
and the kind of moving money around, I feel like
that's the kind of part for me that kind of
tarnishes the whole experience. So it makes me a little
bit paranoid about it, for lack of a better word. Well,
in the course of our off air research when you
first hipped us to this, one of the things we
found was that, according to the BBC, his MET has

(40:34):
no formal structure, no visible organization, no official members or
at least no published list. Yet it may have grown
into the world's largest network of its kind, the world's
largest Muslim network. His Met, by the way, it simply
means service, and of course their official line is they
promote work for the common good. I'd like to explore

(40:54):
some of the finger pointing that happened after the coupe,
because the story is kind of weird, all right. So
there's a political party called the AKP closely associated with Urtigon,
and in the aftermath of the failed coup attempt, Gulan
came out and said, I condemn in the strongest terms

(41:15):
the attempted military coup in Turkey. He eamiled the New
York Times, and he said, you know, government should be
won through free and fair elections, not force. And he's
he's praying for everyone. I'm paraphrasing a little. He says,
as someone who suffered under multiple military coups during the
past five decades, it's especially insulting to be accused of

(41:37):
having any link to such an attempt. I categorically deny
such accusations. President Urdigon contacted the United States when he
wanted Gulan extradited, and he said, I call on you
again after there was a coup attempt. Extradite this man
in Pennsylvania to Turkey. If we are strategic partners or
model partners, do what is necessary. And then a late

(42:00):
the Labor Minister of Turkey fellow fellow by the name
of Suliman Solu claimed that America was behind the coup.
That's why I think it gets interesting, because we know
that this country, regardless of whatever you feel your political
or spiritual ideology is, it is inarguable that this country
has instituted multiple underground coups for our own benefit. Yeah

(42:23):
from maybe not even just to destabilize the government. That's
like a competing on some any number of levels or whatever. Yeah,
we're not nice. Parts of us aren't nice. I mean,
but we are willing to go that extra mile to
make this happen. It's not a stretch. This accusation rings true,

(42:46):
and they know they knew it. I'm sure. Yeah, it's
like there's enough evidence out there that's like, yeah, yeah,
we do that. Of course we would. And in August,
almost a year ago exactly now, a former US diplomat,
a fellow name James Jeffrey, who was the ambassador to
Turkey from two thousand and eight till twenty and ten,
pointed the finger back at the Ghulaw movement and he said,

(43:08):
they have infiltrated, They made some infiltration at least in
the military that I'm aware of. They had extreme infiltration
into the police and judiciary, and he says very clear
that significant segment of the bureaucracy in Turkey was infiltrated
and had their allegiance to the movement, and that's unacceptable,
it's extremely dangerous. It's highly likely that that led to

(43:31):
the coup. So the FBI investigates this innocent high school
kid stuff that happened two years ago, on the off
chance that he became a sleeper agent. I mean, that's
the kind of feeling I got from a little bit there.
They were. Now, maybe it's just me and this is

(43:52):
my only first and only interaction with FBI agents, but
they were, of course very nice, very polite, but they
did seem a little bit suspicious of me, which I
found weird because it was my mom and my own
kind of kind of digging into this whole thing and
starting contacting documentary people and people writing books, journalists, So

(44:12):
it seemed a little odd. So now we reached this
point where tensions are escalating between the US and between Turkey,
and this stuff has obviously been simmering for a while.
This was when Barack Obama was still president, and Urdigon

(44:35):
wrote specifically to President Obama to ask for the extradition
of Gulan, and then the US government said, we will
need evidence of his guilt before any extradition, and then
Urdigon brought out some of the dirty laundry and said,
when you asked for the return of a terrorist, we

(44:55):
did not ask for documentation. Just give them to us.
Let us put them on trial. And at this at
this point, oh and the US officially said, any reports
that we had any previous knowledge of a coup attempt,
or that there was any US involvement in it, that
we were anything other than entirely supportive of Turkish democracy
are completely false, unequivocally false. So the last missing pieces

(45:22):
of puzzle here is like who if? Because there clearly
was a coup, So who does Gulan think was responsible?
If it wasn't his movement, it wasn't his met he said,
he said that Urdugon did it, that it was a
false flag. What do you think about that? I think
that's very interesting. I think that's on one hand, you

(45:44):
definitely do seem erda Wan does does seem to be
kind of consolidating power. And I know there were some
accusations about their connections before and then suddenly all this
dirty laundry about him suddenly came out like, oh, look,
Erdauan and his son had been hiding millions of dollars
in shoeboxes in their home. That's strange. Who found that out? Oh,

(46:05):
it seemed to be this one newspaper that has connection
to Gulan. So it does seem like it could be
a false flag trying to remove them. Another hand, it
could be it did seem like the coup, from what
I understand, wasn't full. They were discovered early on, so
they just tried to rush it like, let's hope we
can still make it work. So maybe it was just,
I know, on using the best of a bad situation.

(46:27):
But let's say it was Gulan for this kind of
just hypothetical. What does the United States know about that?
Because at this point, the United States generally likes putting
people in power who are stabilizing factors and who will
allow us to be strategic partners against Russia and other
kind of large powers in the region. So the thing is,

(46:51):
it's something that's sponsored by the large parts of the government,
is just kind of a smaller project of another hand,
the left hand not speaking to the right hand, who knows.
That's kind of the real kind of question. But it
does seem interesting though, because though Gulan does definitely seem
to be soft power rather than revolution in the streets,

(47:11):
and that's the thing. It just doesn't fit the profile.
But maybe that's just because he hasn't tried before. Yeah,
I mean, we talked about where his money comes from
and like his background. That's an excellent question and thank you,
thank you for getting us on that. So we do
need to learn a little bit more about this person
that we have. We have painted as a shadowy figure,
but we must say to be fair, regularly rights to

(47:34):
media institutions and maintains his innocence. So he was born
in nineteen forty one in April. He's a preacher, a former,
a mom, a writer, obviously involved in politics. There's still
some confusion over his birth dates, so some people say
thirty eight and some people say forty one, nineteen thirty eight,

(47:56):
nineteen forty one. Some critics say that the date he
gives for nineteen thirty eight of ten November is propaganda
because it's the same day that the founder of modern
Turkey out of Turk died. So there's also possibly just
the fact that this would have been a time when

(48:17):
people have physical records, and if a physical record was
destroyed then it's just word of mouth at that point,
which happens more often than you might think. So his
father was also in a mom and he gave his
first sermon when he was fourteen. People consider him sort

(48:39):
of a Turkish nationalist aligned with religion. In one of
the great debates, or one of the tensions behind this movement,
is that modern Turkey is embroiled and obsessed with a
question are we a secular country or are we a
religious country? Are we a democracy? Are we a theocracy?

(49:01):
And the Turkish military is often stepped in to keep
the country quote unquote secular. So to people who would
prefer it to be a secular country, any form of
theocracy or religiously guided government, no matter how mild or
how friendly, is still going to be incredibly dangerous. And

(49:24):
I think you can't overlook the part where Turkey has
been trying to be entered into the EU for a
long time and this stuff just the more that these
kind of embroidered battles happen, the less likely that it's
going to be entered with the EU, but it's still
a very strong and important part of NATO. M Yeah,
that's true, NATO and the EU being separate. And speaking

(49:45):
of Gulan's willingness to speak to the press, he actually
did an interview on NPR with Robert Siegel this month,
July eleventh. Quote. To this day, I have stood against
all coups. I suffered during the military intervention of May
twenty seven, nineteen sixty and then again on March twelfth,
nineteen seventy one, and again on September twelfth, nineteen eighty

(50:07):
and I was targeted February twenty eighth, nineteen ninety seven.
My respect for the military asside I have always been
against interventions. I don't know the people who attempted the
July fifteenth coup. They might know me, They may have
attended some lectures. I have no idea. Thousands of people
have come here to the retreat to visit, among them
fifty members of parliament, former President Abdullah Gull, former Foreign Minister.

(50:30):
I'm at Dabutagalu for this reason. Many people might know me,
but I don't know them. One other thing is I
live here thousands of miles away from Turkey. Some soldiers
decided to do the coup, and despite the many questions
and suspicions that remain of the government account of what
transpired that night, if such claims are still taken to
be credible, I shudder an astonishment. But if I were

(50:52):
to humor that idea, if any one among those soldiers
had called me and told me of their plan, I
would tell them, you are committing murder. So that's pretty explicit,
absolutely and specific. There's also despite the fact that the
Turkish government officially designated the Ghulan Movement or his MET
as a terrorist organization, there's at this point it doesn't

(51:17):
seem like there's direct evidence linking the man himself Gulan
to anything. Well. I think that's kind of part of
the point that that's kind of the strength of the
network is that it doesn't acknowledge each other. It'll work
with each other. They know they can identify other members,
but they won't acknowledge their kind of togetherness. They're like

(51:38):
cells almost terroristic light. But that's the way and what
I think, when I think needs to be known this
a lot of this isn't necessarily it's not something that's
trying to attack the United states or anything dramatic like that.
At the end of the day, it's something that's basically
trying to get both physical capital and political capital wherever

(52:01):
it goes. And I think the only the only real
problem that a lot of people have with it is
with how shady it does and the illegal practices that
it promotes. If it's just the if it follows the
stated goal of interfaith dialogue and a promotion of math
and science education, I don't think anyone has problems with that.

(52:23):
I think it's the real problem with how it's using
it to move people and money in and out of
the country, right, Yeah, and existing in some ways in
a disingenuous gray area. Right. That's you know, that's a
great point because regardless of how somebody may agree or

(52:43):
disagree with the activities here, there does seem to be
financial corruption at the at the minimum. I'm sam. I
would want to ask, what do you think is the
future for these charter academies and have you written to
any of your former teachers written? I am in contact

(53:06):
with one of my former teachers. She's actually started another
charter schools you mentioned earlier. Yeah, she started another charter
school and is trying to get that up off the
ground to basically be just be like a follow what
the original point of that school was to be a
math and science academy. It promoted for youth for the youth,

(53:27):
and I think that that might be something that continues on.
There's a lot of fighting going back and forth on
whether the schools here would remain like they have a
kindergarten through high school right now, and it was gonna
see if they're can remain charter schools or not. Well,
after back and forth and seeing a lot of the
kind of stuff that goes on, the they lost the

(53:48):
charter and they moved to a private institution. So I
feel like that the charter schools are definitely becoming more popular,
but is more and more money goes into them, I
feel like this would be more scrutiny. So either the
schools are going to have to shape up or they're
going to have to go into private institutions. My only
concern is, and now I know this is this goes
again into the kind of allegory. There's a lot of

(54:10):
the money that goes into gaining political support. There's a
lot of it that goes into saying, look where charter
schools were exactly what you want. There's been a lot
of times where they take people on good will trips
to Turkey, like the like the one that I went
on and let me it was a very nice trip.
And if there's a lot of politicians that all they
sees the test scores, all they see is the various awards,

(54:34):
they go on a trip to Turkey. Oh, of course,
why wouldn't I support this? This is very nice and
it follows my political base, and I might get some
political donations out of it that might sustain it. It
just really kind of depends on the zones, and the
more awareness of this, the better keep people honest and
stuff like that. But otherwise I think it's going to

(54:55):
go on a state by state by basis. I can
still see there's definitely a lot of room for growth,
but I don't know if it's sustainable. No, what do
you what do you think about this whole situation? I
think it's really interesting. Um, I don't think we have
enough information to make any definitive final conclusions. I mean,
you know, his defense was so strongly worded and cut

(55:21):
and dry that I couldn't help but be a little
bit taken in by it that could just be the
work of a very charismatic con man. You know, I
don't know. I mean, I think the whole I'm more
fascinated with if it wasn't this than what was it? Yeah,
like it opens up more a lot more questions, Like
the whole thing is a real quagmire. And with the

(55:43):
way that there's a lot of censorship and there's a
lot of conflicting stories even from people. There's people who
are on the ground who who still protests the government
or for the government that it's it's very unclear what
was going on in that situation, and it's still kind
of But here's the thing I find interesting even here
talking to others. My parents have talked to other parents who,

(56:06):
even after it's very much clearly shown the link, a
lot of their parents are like, who cares who? As
long as I'm getting a good education from my kid,
who cares what they're doing with the government's money. That's
what I was saying a minute ago. It's like it
seems like everything was in place, and it was a
positive experience and you did get what you signed up for,
at least on the surface, and you learned Turkish dance,

(56:29):
it's true. You should see me in the dresses twirl amazingly,
well sadly, for everybody who is out there in the
audience today. This is an audio podcast, look at him, Twirl?
Why should we go? So? We hope that you have

(56:49):
enjoyed this episode. This is something that Noel and Matt
and I had never heard of, and we really appreciate
you taking the time to be our first I think
you are our first human intern. Did you know that? Well,
I think that's kind of disparaging towards the NSA agent
of the Sure, well that's true, but then we had
the puppet and the skeleton. Skeleton Yeah right, But I'm

(57:13):
just glad I was able to come on the show,
I was able to tell my story and you weren't
immediately dismissive of the whole crazy affair. Well, uh, we
are all about finding ourselves in situations where the truth
is stranger than fiction. If you would like to learn
more about the story of his met, the Ghulon movement,

(57:33):
and Sam's adventures therein, we're also both very glad you're okay,
then do check out a documentary called Killing Ed. Killing
Ed is this uh, very interesting documentary that It definitely
has its perspective and it's very very strongly coming in there,
but it has a lot of really good information, a
lot of very good quotes, and it really gets to

(57:55):
the heart of a lot of people who were just
like me in the experience. And I feel like just
seeing the different kind of perspectives and hearing the first
hand accounts that I think is very important. And it
remains the only independently produced documentary to investigate the movement's
apparent involvement in the school system and possible political corruption.

(58:18):
But let's say political activities and the alleged connections to
the coup attempt, And this brings up a whole other
kind of cannon warms with the whole charter school thing
in the first place. There's a movie called Waiting for Superman.
I think it's called that's about the implementation of charter
schools and how it seems very appealing on the surface,
but there's a lot of odd politics involved in that

(58:39):
system in general. And now we're seeing, you know, with
again the current administration, the idea of school choice sort
of a misnomer. It doesn't you don't really have It's
almost like the choice aspect of it is sort of
a little bit of a red herring kind of So
I don't know. I almost think we should revisit charter
schools specifically and to look a little deeper into that. Yeah,

(59:02):
and in the meantime, we are going to head out today.
We will return next week with something equally bizarre but
probably also completely different. We do hope you enjoyed this episode,
and most importantly, we hope you write in today and
let us know what you think about this movement, what
you think about charter schools in general. Did you go

(59:24):
to one of these schools? Do you have anything to
add to Sam's perspective? If you're one of my classmates
from twenty ten, let me know, send me a Facebook message,
we'll talk. Wait, you were in middle school in twenty ten.
That's right, Oh man, we gotta go. All right, So
apparently Noel and Tristan and I have to go get
the Early Bird Special somewhere. And that's the end of

(59:47):
this classic episode. If you have any thoughts or questions
about this episode, you can get into contact with us
in a number of different ways. One of the best
is to give us a call. Our number is one
eight three three stdwy t K. If you don't want
to do that, you can send us a good old
fashioned email. We are conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com. Stuff

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