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Parents concern Tucson charter sch. has ties to Turkish nationalists

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  • Parents concern Tucson charter sch. has ties to Turkish nationalists

    Tucson Weekly
    dec 31 2009

    http://www.tucsonweekly.com/tucson/hidden-ag enda/Content?oid=1694764

    Hidden Agenda?
    Parents raise concerns that a Tucson charter school has ties to a
    Turkish nationalist movement

    by Tim Vanderpool


    No one can knock the numbers. In recent years, students at Tucson's
    Sonoran Science Academy have secured stellar scores in math, science
    and other categories. The academy has earned glowing mentions in
    national magazines such as U.S. News and World Report, and in 2009,
    was deemed Charter School of the Year by the Arizona Charter School
    Association.

    But some parents of children who attend the academy on West Sunset
    Road believe it harbors goals reaching far beyond academia. They
    suspect the Sonoran Academy of being part of a confederation of
    learning institutions secretly linked to, and advancing, the cause of
    Turkish scholar and Islamic preacher Fethullah Gülen.

    While most of those parents have resisted coming forward, fearing
    reprisal from an organization they say is known to target critics, one
    parent did agree to speak to the Weekly if we pledged to keep her
    identity hidden. The parent says she represents others at the academy
    who've become suspicious about the striking similarities of its
    educational programs to those of other schools around the United
    States which are operated by Turkish-born staff members.

    She says teachers and administers freely circulate among these
    schools. At the same time, says the parent, the Sonoran Academy seems
    constantly to be bringing Turkish educators into the United States,
    and subjecting students to substitute teachers while the teachers
    await work visas.

    According to this parent, all of these ties may lead covertly back to
    the Gülen movement, named for the scholar, who founded a network of
    schools around the world and now lives in exile in Pennsylvania. She
    says several Sonoran Academy parents believe the school has a hidden
    agenda to promote Gülen's brand of Turkish nationalism, advance
    sympathy for that country's political goals such as winning acceptance
    into the European Union, and discourage official acknowledgement of
    Turkey's genocide against the Armenians during World War I.

    "We found one document, in Turkish, that talks about the purpose of
    these charter schools," says the parent. "They refer to them very
    explicitly as schools (belonging) to their movement. They're
    calculating, and they say if they can have something like 600 schools,
    then every year, they can produce 120,000 sympathizers for Turkey.

    "I sent my kids to this school because I wanted them to meet regular
    Muslims and to see them as ordinary people," she says. "But when I
    find that my kids are to be turned into genocide-deniers, that's very
    disturbing to me."

    Fatih Karatas is principal of the academy's middle school. He calls
    such claims ridiculous.


    "We don't have any kind of connections or any kind of relations with
    that movement or group. A public school can not be affiliated in any
    way with other institutions or groups because of the regulations,
    because of the charters."

    He also says his school has a diverse staff, native to countries
    ranging from Turkey to Mexico, which he considers a benefit. "But
    we're not promoting a certain ideology. ... These are defamatory
    allegations that are not based on any proof or evidence."

    Still, the Sonoran Academy isn't the first Turkish-American-run
    charter school in United States to be accused of links to
    Gülen. Parents at the Beehive Science and Technology Academy in
    Holladay, Utah, have also raised concerns that their school is linked
    to this movement. And according The Salt Lake Tribune, one Beehive
    teacher was fired when his lesson plan about World War II and the
    Holocaust prompted a discussion in which the school's principal
    purportedly questioned that genocide.

    Although Utah's State Charter School Board cleared Beehive of
    deliberately promoting Gülen beliefs, lawmakers there have continued
    to probe its finances. The school-board investigation revealed that
    Beehive received loans from administrators at other Turkish-American
    schools, and from executives of the Accord Institute, a
    California-based organization with a Turkish-American staff. Accord
    provides educational consulting services and develops education models
    for programs for schools including Tucson's Sonoran Academy. But
    Karatas, calls the institute a "private organization," and says he's
    unaware of any ties between Accord and Gülen.

    Other connections raise more questions. They include the Pacifica
    Institute, which operates the "Turkish Olympiads," in which Sonoran
    Academy students are encouraged to participate. The Olympiad contests
    range from essay writing and singing to poetry composition. According
    to its Web site, the institute was formed by Turkish-Americans in
    California with a mission of promoting cross-cultural awareness.

    In December, the Pacifica Institute co-hosted a Gülen conference with
    the University of Southern California, and actively promotes Gülen
    beliefs on its Web site.

    Indeed, the Gülen movement's own Web site seems to lay the groundwork
    for claims made by the Tucson parent. It discusses the group's rapidly
    expanding, worldwide educational facilities which have "made Gülen's
    network the most influential Turkish-Islamic movement both in Turkey
    and abroad. ... In the field of education, this part of the identity
    is however not stressed and teachers from outside the (movement) work
    at these schools as well. They may be non-Muslims and in many cases
    the pupils have never heard of Fethullah Gülen."

    The Weekly was provided with a list of Turkish staff members that have
    rotated through various schools and the Accord Institute - another
    strategy promoted by the Gülen Web site.

    Of course, all of this could be purely coincidental. But the Tucson
    mother says many parents feel increasingly betrayed by what they
    consider the Sonoran Academy's ongoing secrecy.

    "Other parents say, 'I could almost be OK with this if they were out
    in the open about it.' But the (school) has done such a phenomenal job
    of keeping this a secret."

    However, Karatas suggests those who make such claims are flirting with
    trouble.

    "I'm hoping that they know that these are defamatory allegations which
    may put them in trouble later on. These are excelling schools. ... I
    hope they are aware of what they're doing."
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