Followers Of A Mysterious Turkish Islamic Cleric Have Donated Heavily To Hillary’s Campaign And Family Charity

Members of a secretive Turkish Islamic movement that is at thecenter of a congressional ethics committee investigation havedonated hundreds of thousands of dollars to Hillary Clinton’spresidential campaign and to her family’s charity, a DailyCaller investigation has found.

The largest donation from a leader of the Gulen movement, whichis operated from Pennsylvania’s Pocono Mountains by amoderate Muslim cleric named Fethullah Gulen, came from RecepOzkan. (RELATED: Here’s A Map Of RadicalMosques In The U.S. [Interactive])

A former president of the Gulen-linked Turkish Cultural Center,Ozkan gave between $500,001 and $1,000,000 to theClinton Foundation in recent months, the charity’s websiteshows. He also served as a national finance co-chair last year fora pro-Clinton political action committee called Ready PAC.

According to Portland State University political scienceprofessor Birol Yesilada, who has studied the Gulen movement formore than 25 years, Ozkan is the New York liaison for the74-year-old Gulen, who has lived in the Poconos since1999 when he went into exile after he was accused of attempting toundermine Turkey’s secular regime in order to institute anIslamic state.

Gulen also recently ran afoul of Turkey’s president, RecipTayyip Erdogan. Erdogan accused Gulenists of operating a“parallel state,” and he reportedly lobbied PresidentObama last month to extradite Gulen back to Turkey.

By most accounts, the Gulen movement, or Hizmet as it is knownto some, is not a radical Islamic movement. Yesilada, who serves asthe contemporary Turkish Studies endowed chair at Portland StateUniversity, told TheDC in an interview that he has found noevidence of Gulenist ties to any terrorist groups.

But with an estimated 8 million followers and $50 billion inassets, Gulenists do hope to influence both the U.S. and Turkishpolitical system through a worldwide network of businesses,nonprofit organizations, media companies and charter schools,Yesilada and others familiar with the group have claimed.