FETHULLAH GULEN: WHY ARE HIS FOLLOWERS TRAVELING?

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 03 ISTANBUL 000832 
 
SIPDIS 
 
SIPDIS 
 
E.O. 12958: DECL: 05/22/2015 
TAGS: CVIS PREL SOCI KFRD TU
SUBJECT: FETHULLAH GULEN: WHY ARE HIS FOLLOWERS TRAVELING? 
 
REF: A. 05 ISTANBUL 1336 
     ¶B. 04 ISTANBUL 10 
 
ISTANBUL 00000832  001.4 OF 003 
 
 
Classified By: Consul General Deborah K. Jones, Reasons 1.4 (b and d). 
 
¶1.  (C) Summary: Fethullah Gulen sits at the center of a vast 
and growing network encompassing more than 160 affiliated 
organizations in over 30 countries, including over 50 in the 
U.S.  As a result, Gulen supporters account for an increasing 
proportion of Mission Turkey,s nonimmigrant visa applicant 
pool.  As applicants, Gulenists are almost uniformly evasive 
about their purpose of travel and their relationships to 
Gulen, raising questions among Consular officers.  Our unease 
is also shared by secular segments of Turkish society.  End 
Summary. 

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Gulen's Network has Global Reach 
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¶2.  (C) Since before arriving in the U.S. in 1999 on a 
nonimmigrant tourist visa, Fethullah Gulen, 65, has been at 
the apex of a growing global network of organizations that 
profess a peace-loving, ecumenical vision of Islam.  Founding 
and funding predominantly secular schools and other 
educational-related services -- staffed by Gulen's followers 
-- is one of his movement,s major goals.  Nonetheless, Gulen 
has come under Turkish Government scrutiny at various times 
in his life, though this month an Ankara court acquitted him 
of seeking to overthrow Turkey,s secular state. 
 
¶3.  (C) Gulen,s activities first piqued Consular officers, 
interest several years ago when applicants began to appear 
seeking to visit a number of charter schools in the U.S. with 
which Consular officers were unfamiliar.  As the majority of 
the schools had the words "science" and/or "academy" in their 
names, they were easy to identify and track.  Since that 
time, using information gleaned from thousands of interviews 
and application forms, Consular officers have compiled a 
substantial list of organizations that seem in some way 
affiliated with Gulen.  Applicants who we think may be 
affiliated with his movement come from a variety of 
backgrounds and apply across the full spectrum of visa 
classes as tourists, students and exchange visitors.  At our 
last count, Gulen's movement included: 
 
-- Over 30 science academies (set up as charter schools) in 
the U.S.; 
 
-- 52 international science academies in Central Asia / 
Caucasus, Russia, the Balkans, Africa, SE Asia, the Far East, 
the Middle East and Europe; 
 
-- 24 affiliated schools in Turkey; 
 
-- 34 educational consultancies and educational foundations 
(22 of which are in the U.S.); 
 
-- 6 publications and news outlets (including Zaman newspaper 
in Turkey); 
 
-- Various business concerns, including Hacibaba, a Turkish 
restaurant chain now expanding to the U.S., and Atlas, a 
construction and food services firm operating in Turkey and 
Texas; and 
 
-- Over a dozen other organizations and benefactors 
(including influential Turkish business associations such as 
ISHAD (Business Life Foundation), MARIFED (Marmara Business 
Federation), and TUSCON (Turkish Confederation of Businessmen 
and Industrialists)).  The latter umbrella organization 
claims 9,000 members. 
 
¶4.  (C) As the spiritual leader at the center of this growing 
network, Gulen himself attracts hundreds of visitors from 
Turkey every year who seek to met him or hear him preach. 
After interviewing hundreds of applicants whom we suspect are 
affiliated with Gulen's movement, Consular officers have 
noticed that most of these applicants share a common 
characteristic: they are generally evasive about their 
purpose of travel to the United States and usually deny 
knowing or wanting to visit Gulen when questioned directly. 
 
¶5.  (C) These applicants generally are not forthcoming about 
the source of their travel funds. They frequently write 
"myself" or "my company" in response to the travel-funding 
question on the DS-156 application form, but when pressed to 
clarify the exact source of funds, only vaguely answer that 
"my company" or "the organization" will pay.  When pressed 
further as to why "the organization" or "the company" would 
 
ISTANBUL 00000832  002.2 OF 003 
 
 
fund a tourist trip or course of study in the absence of any 
obvious and strong direct ties, most applicants cannot 
provide officers with straightforward, convincing answers; it 
appears that either the applicants themselves don,t fully 
understand or they are hesitant to be forthcoming about the 
truth. 
 
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What is the Profile of Gulen Applicant? 
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¶6.  (C) Although the suspicions engendered among Consular 
officers by this evasiveness of both purpose and funding 
source often result in visa denials, these presumed adherents 
remain reticent about revealing their affiliation with Gulen. 
Some applicants subsequently have explained this reticence 
in the context of either fear of reprisal by the secular 
Turkish establishment or uncertainty about the U.S. 
government,s position towards Gulen. 
 
¶7.  (C) Since Consular officers began actively compiling a 
list of Gulenist organizations several years ago (as well as 
periodically meeting to discuss trends within the Gulenist 
applicant pool), Consular officers in Ankara and Istanbul 
have noticed what appears to a purposeful "shifting" of 
applicant profiles appearing for visa interviews in what may 
be an effort by Gulenists to identify "successful" profiles. 
The most common profiles we have recognized over the past 
several years include: 
 
-- The young exchange visitor: Noted above as the first group 
that gained Consular officers, attention, these were 
predominately young, male college graduates applying for J-1 
exchange visas to teach in science academies in the U.S. 
Most had some prior education or teaching experience in the 
Central Asian republics.  We refused visas to the majority of 
these single males with limited work experience.  One year 
later, in 2004, many of these applicants returned with H1-B 
petitions sponsored by Gulen-affiliated science academies. 
Interestingly, taking into account the processing time for 
H1-B visa petitions, it appears that the H1-B petition 
paperwork for these applicants may have been filed even 
before their J-1 visa interviews. 
 
-- The married middle-aged male with no English and traveling 
alone: Over the past two years, we have seen a strong upswing 
in the number of married middle-aged businessmen who speak no 
English traveling alone for "tourism" or "business" to New 
York, New Jersey, and Connecticut.  The majority of these 
applicants have little or no prior international travel and 
those who do have traveled only to Central Asia, the Balkans 
and Saudi Arabia.  Since their visa cases were not compelling 
on the surface, Consular officers, in the course of digging 
deeper to understand why they wanted to travel to the U.S., 
uncovered their desire to visit Gulen, often through very 
direct questioning.  Most of the applicants still failed to 
qualify for visas.  Since mid-2005, we have seen many of the 
same applicants -- and profile of applicant -- applying as 
members of local business groups by counterpart U.S.-based 
Turkish-American business organizations to look into 
"business opportunities." 
 
-- The middle-school-aged English student: Since the summer 
of 2005, we have seen hundreds of mostly male middle-school 
students participating in both short and long-term English 
exchange programs between their Turkish schools and the 
Gulen-affiliated Putnam Science Academy in Connecticut.  Most 
of these applicants come from middle-class families whose 
fathers own medium-sized businesses (15-50 employees).  The 
issuance rate to these children from stable middle-class 
families is over 90 percent. 
 
-- The graduate student going for English: Since February 
2006, over 50 young male teachers have applied for F-1 visas, 
claiming no knowledge of English and stating that it is 
required for their graduate studies.  All of these applicants 
have recently graduated from known Gulen-affiliated 
universities in Turkey.  Their profiles are similar to the 
"young exchange visitor," but they lack work or travel 
experience.  Their tendency to apply individually to the same 
U.S. institutions -- in this example clearly unaffiliated 
with Gulen,s movement -- is one way that they come to our 
attention.  For example, nearly 50 percent of applicants in 
this profile were going to Rice University and the

 University  of Houston, perhaps to be near 12 Texas organizations or 
schools we think are Gulen-affiliated.  Half of the 
applicants were persistent, applying two or more times. 
 
¶8.  (C) The one clear counter-example of Gulen-affiliated 
applicants who do not display his characteristic evasiveness 
 
ISTANBUL 00000832  003.2 OF 003 
  
is the professional businessmen belonging to Turkish business 
associations such as ISHAD and MARIFED.  They are the owners 
and managers of medium-to-large organizations who leverage 
their affiliation in these groups to further their business 
interests in Turkey and overseas (including the U.S.).  They 
are able to present clear compelling need to travel to the 
U.S., quite apart from any affiliation with Gulen's movement. 
 
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Is There More to the Story Than Meets the Eye? 
--------------------------------------------- - 
 
¶9.  (C) Our "through the window" experiences with the 
Gulenists have enabled us to compile a substantial list of 
Gulen-affiliated organizations around the world, shedding 
light on their travel patterns and some of their personal 
characteristics.  However, beyond the possible Gulenist 
concern that their movement might be viewed negatively by the 
Turkish or U.S. Governments, we have gained relatively little 
insight into the reasons behind these applicants, 
evasiveness when applying for visas.  We know the network of 
affiliated and associated schools, foundations, organizations 
and benefactors continues to expand rapidly, as seen through 
the work and travel experiences of our applicants, but we do 
not know if the network,s activities go beyond providing 
education and spreading Gulen's professed peace-loving, 
ecumenical vision of Islam.  To document our encounters with 
Gulenist applicants to whom we issue visas, we routinely 
subject them to security advisory opinion clearances (Ref B). 
 
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Comment 
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¶10.  (C) In Turkey, Gulenist applicants, the majority with 
travel and work connections to these regions, have become a 
regular and growing part of the nonimmigrant visa applicant 
pool.  We estimate that they comprise three to five percent 
of Mission Turkey,s annual NIV caseload of approximately 
75,000 applicants.  While on the surface a benign 
humanitarian movement, the ubiquitous evasiveness of Gulenist 
applicants -- coupled with what appears to be a deliberate 
management of applicant profiles over the past several years 
-- leaves Consular officers uneasy, an uneasiness echoed 
within Turkey by those familiar with the Gulenists.  More 
information, presented by the Gulenist movement itself, is 
available at http://fetullahgulen.org/. 
JONES

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