Date posted: April 2, 2017
A report published by The Black Sea news website on Saturday revealed that imams from Turkey’s Religious Affairs Directorate (Diyanet) spied on people sympathetic to Turkish Islamic scholar Fethullah Gülen and the movement he inspired in Romania as well.
According to the report, following a July 2016 coup attempt in Turkey, a memo from Turkey’s counselor for religious affairs in Bucharest, Osman Kilic, was sent to the Diyanet in Ankara on Sept. 27, 2016.
This document includes a list of 11 schools, kindergartens and one university that are part of the Lumina Educational Institutions, which have been active in Romania since 1994.
“The Turkish Embassy in Bucharest has told us it ‘does not have any information’ about this correspondence. But documents from the same cache, seen by the European Investigative Collaborations Network, have been confirmed by other Turkish diplomatic missions,” said the report.
“There are tough allegations that the Turkish Embassy is blocking the release of vital documents to Turkish citizens and cancelling their passports — forcing them to stay in Romania, and ‘blackmailing’ parents into pulling their children from Gulenist schools,” added the report.
Turkey’s worldwide monitoring
A report published by German Der Spiegel magazine on Friday revealed details of Turkey’s spying activities on people linked with the Gülen movement around the world.
Evaluating diplomatic cables containing information collected by Turkish diplomatic missions in 35 countries, Der Spiegel wrote: “Turkish embassies in Nigeria, Australia, Kenya and Saudi Arabia have all reported on the schools in those countries they believe to be affiliated with the Gülen movement. They document the organizations in which Gülen supporters are active and the media they write for. They also outline the relationships of the alleged supporters to each country’s government.”
Source: Turkish Minute , April 2, 2017
Tags: Europe | Persecution of Hizmet by Erdogan | Romania | Turkey |

2 May 2012 / MİNHAC ÇELİK, İSTANBUL Marco Padovan, Italian businessman and a member of the Turkish-Italian Trade and Cooperation Association, said during a round table meeting held in İstanbul on Wednesday that Turkish schools play a crucial role in the increase of Turkey’s soft power in the Middle East and North Africa. Speaking during […]

The curious thing about the Flynn-Turkey connection is that it was a very badly-kept secret. Details of Flynn’s connection to a firm that worked on behalf of the Turkish government were known at least by mid-November, and there were hints that something fishy was going before that when he began singing Erdogan’s praises and demanding Gulen’s extradition.

Islamic scholar Fethullah Gülen has called on the government to act “reasonably” in its plan to close test prep schools, adding that they were the ones receiving a “slap,” in a veiled reference to a statement from Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. You have to defend it without making concessions in the language you use,” Gülen said in an apparent message to members of the “Hizmet” [Service] movement.

BAHADIR BERK Interpreting the violent events in France for Aksiyon, Fethullah Gulen said: “Intelligence organizations should work in Turkey more sensitively. Violence should be suppressed even before it gets out of its slot. If you exhaust your power with delusions such as ‘It is possible that these will pose a threat in the future. Let […]

Fethullah Gulen, 72, has been living in self-imposed exile in the US since 1999, reportedly, for health reasons
His movement is famous for its success in the area of education with tens of schools spread across the globe.

Presenting the Gülen movement as the architect of the court ruling may help the government deal with a possible backlash from families, the İHH — an outspoken supporter of the government’s Middle East policies — and a wider segment of its own voters who want Israeli officials to pay for the Mavi Marmara raid, in case a reconciliation deal with Israel goes into effect. Internationally, it may help the government deal with Israeli and Western criticism that it is not committed to reconciliation with Israel despite officially vowing that it is.
