“Gülen,” writes Stephen Kinzer in the April 18, 2013, edition of Time, “is a man of mystery. His influence in his native Turkey is immense, exercised by graduates of his schools who have reached key posts in the government, judiciary and police. This makes him seem like a shadowy puppeteer, and he is scorned by almost as many Turks as love him.” In that same issue of Time, in which Gülen was selected as one of the 100 most influential people in the world, Kinzer describes Gülen as “the most potent advocate of moderation in the Muslim world.” Gülen-inspired charter schools like SAS are not religious schools. Rather, they focus on the sciences, consistent with Gülen’s preaching – an offshoot of the teachings of the Turkish Kurd Said Nursi, which postulates that knowledge of God emerges from knowledge of the world. Gülen followers run private schools around the world, but only in the United States, with the growth of the charter school movement, have they been able to operate schools with public money. Most, if not all, of the key players at SAS have links to Gülen-infuenced schools and institutions, yet they deny any organic connection to Gülen. Tolga Hayali, 40, of Fayetteville, was principal of SAS Junior/Senior High School until last year. He holds the title of superintendent of three schools: SAS, the Utica Academy of Science and the SAS elementary school, in Syracuse. He and his colleagues envision their chain of schools extending across Upstate New York. When first asked about the predominance of Turkish natives among the school’s leaders, Hayali dismissed it as a coincidence having to do with a large influx of tailors to the Rochester area decades back. Fehmi Damkaci, chair of SAS’s board of trustees and
an associate professor of chemistry at the State University College at Oswego, deflected the question in a similar manner, attributing the large number of Turkish staff to the availability in the U.S. of Turkish students with advanced degrees in science. Damkaci was educated in Turkey at Gülen-affiliated institutions, a trajectory familiar to Hendrick and other students of the hizmet. Damkaci began his career teaching at the Yamanlar School, in Izmir, Turkey, which Hendrick calls the model for Gülen’s network of schools worldwide. In Turkey, the schools, tutoring institutes, and related dormitories are the prime source of recruits for Gülen, whose followers number in the millions. Hayali, Swiss-born son of Turkish parents, was given his start in the charter school movement by Ehat Ercanli, who began a charter school in Cleveland in 1999 that grew into Concept Schools, which runs 30 schools in four states. Ercanli, a professor of electrical engineering at Syracuse University and the founder of SAS, declined to speak with the New Times. The Syracuse Academy of Science shares characteristics, personnel, vendors, philosophy and practices with more than 130 Gülen-inspired charter schools in 26 states. Consider: — SAS, unique among Central New York schools, imports teachers and other staff, most of them of Turkish origin. — SAS hires contractors and subcontractors, many of them Turkish, used by Gülen-inspired private and charter schools around the country. This practice has drawn criticism from auditors at the state Comptroller’s Office. — SAS hires many staff members who have worked at either Gülen-inspired charter schools or Gülen-affiliated private schools or organizations. NEXT PAGE
Editor’s note “Charter Flight,” the cover story for the Oct. 16-23 issue, told the story of the Syracuse Academy of Science Charter School. SAS stands out in two significant ways: 1) minority students perform better on state tests than their white classmates do, which runs counter to most urban public schools; 2) the leadership of the school rests in the hands of men of Turkish origin, many of whom have been influenced by or admire Fethullah Gülen, a Turkish imam who has resided in Pennsylvania’s Pocono mountains since 1999. In subsequent months, the New Times has been examining the links between SAS and the Gülen movement. The results of our reporting appear here.
syracusenewtimes.com | 06.25.14 - 07.01.14
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