School principal

We visited a private primary school, operated by people associated
with the Gulen movement. The man in the picture is the principal, who
described a program of education that sounded exemplary in every way.

They operate In a way similar to that of the KIPP Academy, where I got
to organize a short course on world religion in Houston. Now, the
school in Konya draws most of its kids from the families of the city's
professional class. There's a teaching hospital near the school, and
lots of the parents are physicians. Still, the school admits a certain
number of scholarship children, and the love, intensity of parental
involvement, and staff dedication is apparent from the program
structure and from the faces of the kids we saw.

In the photo, the principal is holding a paper he carries, that list
the names of all the children in the school.

The Gulen Movement provides guiding philosophical bases, inspires
donations of time, money, land, and the like to open schools around
the world. Yet (so the story goes) the education the deliver is not a
religious one per se. Their curricula are secular, designed according
to local government standards wherever they operate.

I'm a skeptical guy, always curious about the "hidden agenda" behind
anything I see. It's certainly possible that I'm looking at a series
of "Potemkin villages," but with each new view of these folks, from
different directions and angles, the probability diminishes.

One of my curiosities was whether the schools are part of a cult of
personality, with Fethullah Gulen as a messianic figure at its center.
This has been suggested in some of the writings I've read from the
movement's detractors, both secularist and Islamic fundamentalist. It
would be disappointing for me, as I already (try to) follow a
messianic figure, Jesus.

In this school, there is no picture of Gulen on any wall, no quoted
slogan put up, and no mention of Gulen in the name of the school. If
it is a cult of personality, it doesn't operate in the usual way.
There's an Ataturk cult, as in many places around here (see a
following photo post), but the Gulen movement is looking either
angelically humble or devilishly subtle--so far.

I'll keep watching things unfold here, and remain my skeptical self.