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

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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

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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

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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?
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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