Turkish government seeks probe of Harmony schools
AUSTIN — The Turkish government is reaching into Texas to level complaints against a charter school network it says is funneling money to a group plotting to overthrow its government.
A group hired by the Republic of Turkey to probe operations of Texas’ largest charter school network filed a complaint Tuesday with the Texas Education Agency, asking it to investigate a series of allegations against Houston-based Harmony Public Schools.
Among accusations against the 30,000-student school system in the 38-page complaint are claims the charter network employs an illegal visa scheme to place unqualified Turkish teachers into key school positions and that officials strike deals with preferred vendors instead of using competitive bidding. The actions of the charter system ultimately support an exiled Muslim cleric, the complaint alleges.
Defenders of the charter school network say the complaint is a politically charged rehashing of old issues Harmony has debunked or addressed.
A TEA spokesman said officials have yet to decide whether to investigate the claims but said that determination relies on whether the state has jurisdiction to probe Harmony.
The complaint was penned by Amsterdam & Partners LLP, a law firm with offices in London and Washington, D.C., which was hired by the Republic of Turkey at a cost of $50,000 a month to investigate Harmony. After filing a 90-part open-records request to the school system last November, which Harmony said would cost $690,000 to fulfill, Amsterdam urged the state to investigate Harmony’s practices in light of previous investigations into the network and a coming expansion of 15 new campuses over the next two years.
Harmony operates 46 charter schools across Texas, including 13 in the Houston area, using public funds to manage a school system without the strings attached to traditional public schools. The schools are considered high performing with several receiving national accolades.
Critics allege the school network founded by Turkish immigrants who wanted to focus on science, technology, engineering and math has ties to a controversial Turkish scholar, Fethullah Gülen,
who has been accused of plotting to overthrow the Turkish government.
Harmony staff see the barrage of complaints as a politically motivated witchhunt by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan following his 2014 election in which 90 percent of Turkish citizens in the United States voted against him. Erdogan’s vocal critics include Gülen, a Muslim cleric who exiled himself to Pennsylvania in 1999.
Past lawsuits
Lawyers hired by the Turkish government link Harmony to dozens of other U.S.-based charter schools run by Turkish immigrants, claiming those schools are connected to Gulen. They contend the schools are part of a large visa-fraud and moneylaundering scheme that aims to undermine and overthrow the Turkish government.
“Gulen uses the schools in the United States to get his followers out of Turkey,” attorney Bob Amsterdam said Monday. “It’s a massive scheme to, basically, launder money back to the Gulen organization. It’s very sophisticated. It’s completely non-transparent.”
Amsterdam pointed to discrimination lawsuits filed by Harmony employees over the last decade that claimed that Turkish men were paid more and given preference over American teachers. He also noted that Turkish contractors have profited from Harmony and suggested the charter school system makes political donations to stave off scrutiny.
Amsterdam called for the TEA to scrutinize what he characterized as a “mass level of deception.”
“The money that they’re skimming off American taxpayers finds its way back to Turkey,” Amster- dam said. “They’ve been trying to overthrow the government of Turkey.”
Soner Tarim, the chief executive officer and co-founder of Harmony Public Schools, called the claims “bogus,” “mindboggling” and “ridiculous.”
“I’d rather be spending my time with principals and teachers. Instead I have to deal with these nonsense allegations,” he said while driving to Austin to meet with TEA officials.
Corrections made
Past investigations into his school system resulted in corrections. The system has reduced the number of employees on visas from 20 percent to less than 7 percent and outsourced procurement operations to the Harris County Department of Education, said Mustafa Tameez, a spokesman for Harmony. The system plans to send a note to parents Wednesday briefing them about the complaint,
Tameez said.
A 2012 state audit found Harmony had misspent more than $186,000 in federal grant money meant to improve education for students with disabilities or from low-income families, an issue Tameez said has been addressed.
The allegations contained in Tuesday’s complaint are “nothing more than a politically-motivated re-hash of old claims and complaints that have been heard and investigated previously and found to be without merit,” read a statement from the charter school network.
State Board of Education member David Bradley, R-Beaumont, called the attacks against Harmony “blatantly personal and political.”
“We have audited Harmony like every other charter school,” he said. “The only thing they are guilty of is having been part of a great American immigration story.”