Since the failed coup attempt in Turkey on July 15, the Turkish government has been calling on the Ukrainian authorities to investigate the legal and financial affairs of educational and cultural institutions in Ukraine that it says are linked to Fethullah Gülen, the man Turkey alleges was behind the coup plot.
As a spiritual leader of millions of people around the world, Gülen is accused by Turkey of undermining its secular democracy. Members of his movement have been accused by the Turkish government of attempting to infiltrate the government, police, and army in Turkey.
Last year the Turkish government declared the movement a terrorist organization, which it has dubbed FETÖ (a Turkish acronym for “Fethullah’s Terrorist Organization”), and Turkey’s leaders have claimed it poses a danger to international security.
Gülen’s movement is a broad educational, cultural and business network spanning 140 countries. Although he himself doesn’t have any formal relation to any of the institutions, Turkey claims they are founded and run by Gülen’s loyal followers and members of his movement, known as “Hizmet” (Service) or “Cemaat” (Assembly).
Gülen links in Ukraine?
Although Gülen and his supporters seem to be an internal problem for Turkey, the aftermath of the failed coup have impacted countries around the world due to concerns that Turkish schools and cultural centers abroad might be tied to the Gülenist network.
In Ukraine, there are at least two institutions that have been claimed to be Gülen-linked: the Kyiv-based Meridian International School and the Isık (Syaivo) Ukrainian-Turkish Cultural Center. Other sources also mention the Black Sea High School in Odesa and the Simferopol International School in now-annexed Crimea.
Parents and children enter the Meridian International School in Kyiv on Sept. 1. (Anastasia Vlasova)
After claims appeared in Turkish media in July that Meridian had Gülenist ties, its principal, Natalia Lymar, denied this connection in an interview with the Kyiv Post. She said that the media reports caused minimal damage to the school, as only four Turkish families had taken their kids out of the school before the start of the new academic year. Meridian remains one of the most popular schools among expatriates and local business people with a curriculum focused on foreign languages, sciences and math, she said.
On Oct. 27, Lymar said that the school was continuing to work as normal. “No official notifications from Turkish or Ukrainian law enforcers have come to us yet. We’re just trying to forget about those accusations and move on,” she said.
The school’s fees are quite high: Hr 162,000 ($6,300) per year for a class with English-language instruction, Hr 112,500 ($4,300) per year for a class with Ukrainian as the teaching language, and Hr 99,000 ($3,800) per year for a place in the school’s kindergarten.
“We have no international donors and no other financing apart from the tuition our parents pay for the school,” said Lymar. “Every hryvnia counts. All the money goes to buying food supplies, books, trips for students, and other needs.”
Meanwhile, Volodymyr Serhiychuk, the co-founder of Isık (Syaivo), the Ukrainian-Turkish Cultural Center, said he was outraged by the accusations, adding that the Turkish Embassy in Ukraine had itself help in the opening of the center three years ago.
Both Meridian and Syaivo claimed they have nothing to do with politics, and merely promote Turkish culture through providing language classes and organizing events such as the Turkish Olympiad – a Turkish language and culture competition.
Although articles referring to Meridian and Syaivo can be easily found on Hizmet News, a website covering the activities of Gülen’s Hizmet movement and its followers around the world, there is no firm evidence available publicly that they are indeed linked to Gülen’s movement.
The Turkish authorities, however, say they have provided undeniable evidence of such links to Ukrainian officials, and that Ukraine should now investigate the legal and financial grounds of Meridian and Syaivo’s activities.
“We believe that Gülen’s structures, including those in Ukraine, are not legitimate,” Turkish Ambassador to Ukraine Yönet Can Tezel told the Kyiv Post. “There are direct links to Gülen movement which raises questions on how these institutions were established, how they operate, who the founders and teachers are, where their startup capital came from, and where the revenues go. We saw many contradictions with Ukrainian law, and these violations have to be investigated by the Ukrainian authorities.”
Post-coup crackdown
In a post-coup crackdown, Turkey within a few weeks closed more than 1,000 Gülen-affiliated private schools around the country, including 15 universities, and revoked the licenses of 21,000 teachers. The Turkish Higher Education Council also demanded the resignation of 1,577 university deans.
In other countries, however, the Turkish government is unable to act against Gülen-affiliated schools directly, since most of them are private. Instead, it has been calling for their closure.
Some countries, like Azerbaijan, Niger and Somalia, shut down the schools at the request of the Turkish government and declared their support for Turkey in its fight against FETÖ. Others, like Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan, said they had found nothing illegal in the schools’ activities.
However, some countries did suspect the Gülen global network of having a hidden agenda and being involved in business malpractice long before the failed Turkish coup attempt in 2016.
In the United States, for example, Gülen-affiliated charter schools have been accused of money laundering, visa fraud and the misuse of taxpayers’ money. In former Soviet republics with Muslim populations, Turkish schools have been suspected of having a religious influence on students. Russia, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan shut them down in the 2000s.
A solution?
At the same time, Turkish schools have gained a reputation of providing high-quality education and giving scholarships to talented kids whose families couldn’t afford tuition. They are considered prestigious in Central Asia, the Balkans and Africa.
Tezel said the Gülen-affiliated schools and centers in Ukraine don’t necessarily need to be closed. Instead, they could be transferred to the Turkish Education Foundation for operation, as happened in Guinea, or be taken over by a local nongovernmental organization with a more transparent policy.
“It’s crucial not to harm the students and local staff, who had good intentions,” said Tezel. “Like us in the past, they were shown only the positive side of Gülen structures. But the innocence of these Ukrainians does not make the Gülenist institutions in Ukraine innocent.”
In attempt to regain the Turkish government’s influence in Ukraine, the Turkish Cooperation and Coordination Agency, a state body, last week opened a Crimean Tatar cultural center and launched Turkish language classes at Taras Shevchenko National University in Kyiv.
“Until now, in countries like Ukraine, FETÖ hid behind the Turkish language and the colors of the Turkish flag to open language courses and schools, and used their incomes to commit betrayal,” said Mahmut Çevik of the agency.“Nobody has the right to use Turkish flag and language for their own businesses and purposes.”
“Nobody has the right to use Turkish flag and language for their own businesses and purposes.”
