Tucson: Parents concerned about charter school run by Turkish Islamist movement
By creeping
Last year we posted a piece from Campus Watch that raised concerns about a Turkish organization, Fethullah Gulen, possibly infiltrating U.S. schools to advance Islamism. That post has received quite a few hits and comments recently.
Now, another of the Gulen schools, one that was listed in the previous piece, in Arizona, has come under scrutiny. By Tim Vanderpool in the Tucson Weekly, Parents raise concerns that a Tucson charter school has ties to a Turkish nationalist movement:
No one can knock the numbers. In recent years, students at Tucson’s Sonoran Science Academy have secured stellar scores in math, science and other categories. The academy has earned glowing mentions in national magazines such asU.S. News and World Report, and in 2009, was deemed Charter School of the Year by the Arizona Charter School Association.
But some parents of children who attend the academy on West Sunset Road believe it harbors goals reaching far beyond academia. They suspect the Sonoran Academy of being part of a confederation of learning institutions secretly linked to, and advancing, the cause of Turkish scholar and Islamic preacher Fethullah Gülen.
While most of those parents have resisted coming forward, fearing reprisal from an organization they say is known to target critics, one parent did