Rather than Deport Gulen, Dismantle His Toxic Empire

This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute.

The Trump administration is reportedly considering afresh a longstanding request by Turkey’s Sharia-supremacist president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, to deport another Turkish Islamist who previously helped Erdogan’s “fundamental transformation” of their nation. 

It’s tempting to endorse the idea of expelling Fethullah Gulen.  After all, he has built an empire of charter schools across the United States that are using generous taxpayer subsidies stealthily to inculcate Turkish- supremacism in many thousands of Americans as a kind of gateway drug for Sharia-supremacism.

Still, no good can come of appeasing Erdogan, who stopped behaving like a reliable U.S. ally years ago.  It would only embolden him to act even more aggressively, in his region and here.  Our interests would be far better served by relentlessly investigating Gulen’s Trojan Horse schools and other problematic business ventures in this country and, if warranted, strip him of them. 

This is Frank Gaffney.