The investigation conducted by The Record newspaper and its website, NorthJersey.com, revealed that some founders of these schools have close ties to the FETO network, led by Fetullah Gulen, a Turkish expatriate living in neighboring Pennsylvania whose extradition is being sought by Ankara for allegedly masterminding last year’s deadly coup attempt in Turkey.
It found that seven schools in the state have collected over “$60 million in taxpayer money last year alone to fund their growth”. Some of these charter schools belong to Turkish immigrants influenced by Gulen, it added.
“There are also political donors who collectively have furnished hundreds of thousands in donations to U.S. office-holders while the North Jersey charter schools in general have been adept at wooing state and local government officials with trips to Turkey and, in some cases, jobs,” said the story.
In a wide-ranging study of the FETO-linked institutions, reporters found that the schools have also been a channel for state taxpayer money to private entities that serve the schools as landlords or vendors, including a boarding school in the Wayne Township “that is openly Gulen inspired.”
In a kind of shell game, the FETO schools would also pay firms for service or rent, but these firms were also connected to FETO, the paper reported. And state taxpayer money supported this arrangement.
“It’s clear these schools were being used both to raise funds for Gulen and employ Gulen followers and teachers and basically have them tie a percent of their income back to Gulen,” Robert Amsterdam, a London-based lawyer hired by Ankara who is investigating FETO-linked charter schools in the U.S., told the paper.