Serif Ali Tekalan, a medical school professor, was recently appointed president of the Houston, Texas-based North American University, according to a Dec. 19 statement by the university.
Tekalan is on the Turkish Interior Ministry’s Most Wanted terrorists list, with a reward of 750,000 Turkish liras ($205,829) for information leading to his capture, over his links to the Fetullah Terrorist Organization (FETO), the group Turkey says is behind the defeated coup, which left at least 248 people martyred and nearly 2,200 injured.
North American University, formerly North American College, was founded by Gulenists in 2010.
Before the coup attempt, he served as the rector of Istanbul’s Fatih University, another FETO school.
Tekalan first fled the police after being implicated in a 2010 cheating scandal. When police issued an arrest warrant for his links to two suspects accused of supplying thousands of FETO-linked individuals questions and answers for Turkey's Public Personnel Selection Exam (KPSS), he became a fugitive.
On the run, Tekalan posted selfies of himself from Paris before making his way to Texas.