Pacifica Institute - A Gulen Dialogue road show: June 2016

Monday, June 13, 2016

Pacifica Institute A Gulen Lobbying Group tied to excessive travel of politicians to Turkey, Azerbaijan

A Turkish religious movement has secretly funded as many as 200 trips to Turkey for members of Congress and staff since 2008, apparently repeatedly violating House rules and possibly federal law, a USA TODAY investigation has found. The group — a worldwide moderate Islamic movement led by a religious scholar named Fethullah Gülen — has been accused by the Turkish government of attempting a coup in that country. Turkish leaders have asked the United States to extradite Gülen from the remote compound in rural Pennsylvania where he has lived for 20 years.

The movement has founded hundreds of charter schools across the United States and around the world, has its own media organizations, and was deeply entrenched with the Turkish regime until a falling out two years ago. That led President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to declare Gülen was running "a parallel state" inside the country with the intent of undermining the government. In advance of Turkish elections this weekend, police raided the offices of Gülen affiliated-media organizations.. A dozen different Gülen groups have sponsored congressional travel since 2008 and have filed forms with the House certifying that they were paying for the trips. The House Ethics Committee approved all the trips in advance based on the forms the Gülen groups submitted.

But a USA TODAY investigation found many of those disclosures were apparently false. Some of the Gülenist groups claimed to be certified nonprofits, but they do not appear in state or IRS databases of approved charities. Groups that did register with the IRS filed tax forms indicating that they did not pay for congressional travel. And five of the groups admitted to congressional investigators earlier this year that a Gülenist group in Turkey was secretly covering the costs of travel inside Turkey for lawmakers and staff. Congressional disclosures show the Gülen-backed trips totaled more than $800,000 in free travel for lawmakers and staff. That number likely underestimates the costs since many of the in-country expenses were not reported. And it is not at all clear where the $800,000 came from, since many of the groups involved do not appear to have the resources to pay for large delegation trips. One Gülen group, the Texas-based Turquoise Council of Americans and Eurasians, sponsored trips for three lawmakers and seven staff members in 2011, filing disclosures claiming it was the sole sponsor of the trips at a total cost of about $54,000. But the same organization filed an IRS tax form that year claiming it spent only $33,000 on travel with no expenditures for the travel of public officials.

The network of Gülen organizations is hard to untangle. The BBC reported in 2013 "the movement's influence extends far beyond Turkey, funding hundreds of Islamic schools, and think tanks and media outlets, from Kenya to Kazakhstan. It has attracted millions of followers and billions of dollars." Rep. Mike Honda, D-Calif., took an eight-day trip to Rep. Mike Honda, D-Calif., took an eight-day trip to Turkey sponsored by a Gulen-connected group. In August 2013, Rep. Mike Honda, D-Calif., took an eight-day trip to Turkey sponsored by the Pacifica Institute, which claimed on congressional disclosure forms to be an IRS-recognized non-profit covering the $5,700 cost of the trip. But the IRS has no record of Pacifica being a recognized non-profit. "Congressman Honda quite simply took a trip that was entirely approved by the House," said spokeswoman Lauren Smith. In April 2011, the same group filed forms with the House Ethics Committee to sponsor two separate trips. In one form, for a trip by then-congressman Bob Filner, D-Calif., Pacifica Institute claimed to be a subsidiary of a group called Global Cultural Connections. In another batch of forms filed for a trip by a handful of congressional staff, Pacifica declared itself to be a part of the West America Turkic Council. Both of those groups are registered with the IRS as non-profits, but neither reported any expenses for lawmaker travel on their 2011 and 2013 tax returns.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2015/10/29/turkish-faith-movement-secretly-funded-200-trips-lawmakers-and-staff/74535104/