Chief Investigative Reporter
NASHVILLE, Tenn. - Who's providing
free foreign trips to state lawmakers -- and what do they want?
A group of Tennessee legislators will
soon be packing their bags and heading overseas for what most Tennesseans would
consider an exotic trip.
But those lawmakers will not be picking
up the tab -- and few seemed to know anything about the group that is.
In the waning days of this year's
legislative session, lawmakers debated whether proposed changes to the state's
campaign finance laws would open the door to foreign influence.
"If you want to know who
contributes to my campaign, it's as easy as the click of the mouse," said
Rep. Terri Lynn Weaver, a Smith County Republican.
Still, what you won't find online --
and what Weaver did not mention -- is that, in late May, a select group of
state lawmakers will be jetting off for a 12-day, all-expenses paid trip, landing
first in Azerbaijan, then heading a few days later to nearby Turkey.
The invitations came from a group
called the Turkish American Chamber of Commerce of the Southeast
-- with the money coming from a sister group called the Turquoise Council of Americans and Eurasians.
Both groups have ties to a movement
headed by a moderate Muslim imam named Fethullah Gulen.
"You have accepted the invitation
to go on the trip?" NewsChannel 5 Investigates asked Rep. Mark
White.
"I would like to look into going
on that, yes," the Memphis Republican answered.
"Why is that?"
"Because it's an educational
experience."
White is one of the nine lawmakers who
have accepted the invitation to go on the trip.
Others, according to a list provided to
NewsChannel 5, are: Sen. Stacey Campfield, R-Knoxville; Sen. Brian Kelsey,
R-Germantown; Rep. Vance Dennis, R-Savannah; Rep. Roger Kane, R-Knoxville; Rep.
Antonio Parkinson, D-Memphis; Rep. Joe Towns, D-Memphis; Rep. Johnnie Turner,
D-Memphis; and Terri Lynn Weaver.
Safety Commissioner Bill Gibbons has
also agreed to go, as has his assistant commissioner David Purkey.
"Does it matter to you who is
paying for this trip?" we asked White.
"Yeah, we'll find that out,"
he answered on the last day of the legislative session. "Like I say, I
just have not had a chance to -- we've been so busy in session -- just haven't
had a chance to look into that yet."
Fethullah Gulen has generally drawn
praise for his moderate religious views and his message of tolerance.
Time Magazine just named him to its
lists of the 100 most influential people in
the world.
But a U.S. State Department cable
published by Wikileaks describes his movement as being one that
"officially professes to be interested in ecumenical understanding, but
whose roots are intensely Islamic."
As 60 Minutes reported last
year, the movement is also behind a secular network of science and
math charter schools that began in Turkey and has now spread to the U.S.
One of those is in Memphis.
In fact, our NewsChannel 5
investigation discovered that the president of the Turkish American Chamber,
Ayhan Korucu, is also the president of a Gulen school, the Fulton Science
Academy, in Atlanta.
And the president of the Turquoise
Council, Kemal Oksuz, is -- according to the New York Times -- a principal in a company that has built
Gulen schools in the U.S. Oksuz also has served as chairman of the Gulen
Institute and was interviewed for a PBS story on the imam.
The trip comes at a time that some
lawmakers, like White, are pushing legislation to make it easier for charter
schools to get approval to open across the state.
"You're telling me something that
I haven't heard before," White said.
"Should you have asked who was
providing the funding before you accepted?" NewsChannel 5 Investigates asked.
"Well," the lawmaker
answered, "it's been done for so many years I didn't see any problem with
it."
House Education Committee Chairman
Harry Brooks, a Knoxville Republican who has been helping to coordinate the
upcoming trip, keeps in his office mementos from both Azerbaijan and Turkey
from a trip he accepted last year.
Brooks said that there were five
Tennessee lawmakers on that trip.
Other lawmakers, according to Brooks,
were: Sen. Reginald Tate, D-Memphis; Rep. Joe Armstrong, R-Knoxville; Rep. Josh
Evans, R-Greenbrier; and Rep. Gary Odom, D-Nashville.
It was trip that Brooks described as
part economic development, part goodwill.
"What we gain is, one, an
understanding of a society that wants to be a friend to this country," he
added.
But Brooks insisted that charter
schools were never discussed.
"That has never been an item of
discussion," he said.
And Tennessee isn't alone in getting
attention from the Turkish groups.
Some lawmakers have reportedly had second thoughts about such
trips in Texas, where there's a whole chain of Gulen schools.
But even if the ultimate goal is to
curry favor with lawmakers, Brooks still doesn't see a problem.
"If you're a legislator in the
state of Tennessee and if you don't have the courage to vote your conviction --
whether someone has given you a donation or not -- you don't need to be down
here -- simple fact," he said.
One of those invitees, Rep. Johnnie
Turner, insisted that she is a staunch charter school opponent.
Under Tennessee law, if the hosts had
hired lobbyists, these trips would be illegal.
But, as is, they are entirely legal --
and no one has to disclose them to the public.
Late Monday, NewsChannel 5 Investigates heard from Kemal Oksuz -- and he put
the cost at close to $4,000 a person. He said lawmakers from several states
were being invited.
Still, Oksuz insisted the goal is about
establishing opportunities for partnerships, not about charter schools.
E-mail: pwilliams@newschannel5.com
Tenn. lawmakers encounter Turkish protesters
Stacey Campfield
“They were really a lot like the Occupy Wall Street crowd, or Occupy Nashville,” said Campfield, adding that he had talked with several of the protesters, who were in a peaceful mode when encountered by the Tennesseans in Istanbul.
“They had the same type of arguments” in complaints about capitalism, interrelated with what the protestors saw as unwarranted development of a city park, said Campfield, one of several legislators making the trip sponsored by the Turkish-American Chamber of Commerce of the Southeast.
The Knoxville News Sentinel has the rest of the story. - See more at: http://www.johnsoncitypress.com/article/108489/tenn-lawmakers-encounter-turkish-protesters#sthash.ReXir3L0.dpuf
No comments:
Post a Comment