Covering their tracks:
Gulenists are removing evidence from websites
January 2011
As evidence of connections between the Gulen charter schools, Gulenist organizations, the Gulen Movement and Fethullah Gulen is publicized, Gulenists react by busily scrubbing the web of any of this evidence that they are able to control. The mere fact that evidence has disappeared from various Gulenist websites shortly after it was used to show such connections is in itself yet more evidence.
The evidence that "disappeared" has been documented with screenshots and other saved files.
Some examples are presented here.
Disappearance of "Why is Fethullah Gulen in Texas?" article
In early 2010, an article entitled “Why is Fethullah Gulen in Texas?” could be viewed on the website of Today's Zaman. The article, dated April 3, 2009, was an English translation of a Sabah article by Mahmut Ovur. It began with the lines “We are at the Turkish Olympiads in Houston, Texas, sponsored by the Cosmos foundation, a nonprofit organization that the Fethullah Gülen movement is involved in.” This line is very interesting, given Harmony Superintendent Soner Tarim's flat denial to a Texas news outlet of any connection between the Gulen Movement and the Cosmos Foundation.
Sometime during 2010, this article was removed.
The article link was:
http://todayszaman.com/tz-web/detaylar.do?load=detay&link=168573
Note that articles do not normally disappear from the Today's Zaman website; articles dating back to 2007 can still be accessed. Today's Zaman is run by the Gulen Movement.
Disappearance of Paterson Charter School board minutes
Through summer 2010, the meetings of board minutes for the Paterson Charter School for Science and Technology, a Gulen charter school in New Jersey, were accessible as downloadable pdf documents on the school website. This site and another site referred to some material from these board minutes.
Subsequent to this, at some point in late summer or early fall 2010, these minutes disappeared from the school website.
Identical mission statements of Gulen schools in different countries have now been altered
On Dec 19, 2010, it was noted on the Organic Ties page of our companion site that the mission statements of Sonoran Science Academy, a Gulen charter school in Arizona, and the United School of Al Yahar, a private Gulen school in the United Arab Emirates, were word-for-word identical except for the school name. On Jan 4, 2011, it was found that the mission statement of the United School of Al Yahar had been changed on their website.
Email address for Science Academy of Chicago domain changed to hide connection with Concept Schools
On Aug 11, 2010, our page on Concept Schools noted that the the domain registrant email for the website of the Science Academy of Chicago, saoc.org, was info@conceptschools.org, a fact that clearly demonstrated a significant connection between Concept and this private Gulen school, which is under the same umbrella organization, namely Niagara Educational services, as the openly Gulenist Niagara Foundation. Concept schools now manages 25 publicly funded Gulen charter schools in Midwestern states.
By August 30, 2010, the registrant email for saoc.org had been changed to info@saoc.org .
Gulen, Kimse Yok Mu and Hamas: disappearance of a webpage
On September 2, 2010, this webpage mentioned a meeting attended by representatives of the Gulenist charity Kimse Yok Mu, which Fethullah Gulen had donated to, and also attended by a Hamas spokesperson who thanked the various Turkish aid groups for their help. The account of the meeting referred to was from a webpage of the Union of NGOs of the Islamic World (UNIW). This webpage dated from January 2009, and thus had been accessible for a long period of time. By September 17, 2010, this page had disappeared. Later, the page reappeared, then disappeared again.
The original link to the page was
http://www.ngounion.org/en/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=312:hundreds-of-ngos-gathered-for-gaza&catid=1:haberler&Itemid=2
The page can still be viewed as a Google cache dated Dec 15, 2010, at the following link:
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:TTMFWPTEdTwJ:www.theunity.org/en/index.php%3Foption%3Dcom_content%26view%3Darticle%26id%3D312:hundreds-of-ngos-gathered-for-gaza%26catid%3D1:haberler%26Itemid%3D2+UNIW+hamas&cd=4&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us
This disappearance is particularly interesting as it is our impression that UNIW is not a Gulenist organization. Nevertheless, it appears that either the Gulen Movement had enough sway with them to persuade them to take the page down, or the UNIW itself wished to dissociate itself from the matter.
(Note added Nov 2012: The page can now be viewed at the link http://www.theunity.org/en/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=312:hundreds-of-ngos-gathered-for-gaza&catid=1:haberler&Itemid=2 )
(More examples are forthcoming.)
