Turkey presses Afghanistan to hand over control of Gülenist schools

Afghan authorities have drafted a deal giving the Turkish government control of more than a dozen schools in Afghanistan affiliated with the exiled cleric Fethullah Gülen. Western and Afghan officials believe the agreement is part of a bargain allowing Afghanistan’s vice-president, Abdul Rashid Dostum, who has been accused of abducting and torturing a political rival, to seek exile in Turkey. Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, claims Gülen masterminded a coup attempt last year. Turkish teachers at Gülen-linked schools say the Turkish embassy in Kabul is refusing to issue them passports, rendering them unable to travel. The Afghan-Turk CAG Educational (ATCE)runs 16 schools across Afghanistan. Widely considered some of the country’s best, they teach science classes in English and boast a 98% success rate in university en

trance exams. Thirty per cent of the 8,000 students are girls. “Our schools fight radicalisation and uphold human values,” said the ATCE chairman, Numan Erdoğan, who is no relation to the president. It is proposed that the schools will be assigned to Maaref, a Turkish government-run foundation. Turkey is a long-standing patron of Dostum. The Afghan president, Ashraf Ghani, is believed to have discussed his exile with Erdoğan. Dostum has denied the claims against him. This month an Afghan government commission drafted a memorandum reportedly recommending dissolving ATCE. A week later Dostum boarded a plane to Turkey.

Mujib Mehrdad, a spokesman for the Afghan education ministry, confirmed the existence of the memorandum but denied its recommendation was related to Dostum. Ahmad Fawad Haydari, the vicechair of ATCE, said: “We are hoping the president will not heed to the unlawful suggestion. We haven’t done anything to deserve to be dissolved.” Mathias Findalen, an external associate professor in Turkish affairs at Copenhagen University, said international Gülenist schools were often founded by private individuals without an explicit political doctrine. They adhered to “a philosophy of peace and dialogue between religions”, he said. “Generally, the schools have had an extremely good reputation,” Findalen said, though he added that some schools had been accused of corruption and operating cult-like payment schemes. In Afghanistan, more than 700 of ATCE’s 900 staff are Afghan, and school curricula are approved by Afghan authorities. “We don’t want to be victims of politics,” said one student’s mother at a recent rally in Kabul to defend the schools. “We are a poor family but I still sent my son to study here.”

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