Hundreds of Texas legislatures and school officials have been on Trips to Turkey sponsored by Gulen Movement

Texas you got the Gulen disease bad.
you have 60 Gulen Harmony schools and a few outliner "science academies" hiding under other names.
Their real estate scam and bond scam will bankrupt you stupid Americans.

http://www.caller.com/story/opinion/editorials/2017/02/13/state-lawmakers-need-not-go-far-texas/97862258/

State lawmakers with an eye toward re-election are apt to brag about how far they'd go to further Texas' interests. But voters should consider with healthy skepticism whether subsidized trips to Turkey serve their interests.

Ten Texas lawmakers and 152 state lawmakers from 29 states toured Turkey between 2006 and 2015. Their sponsors were nonprofits associated with a Turkish opposition group accused by the Turkish government of being involved in an unsuccessful coup. The group's leader, Fethullah Gulen, is a longtime U.S. resident cleric who practices what is described as a friendly brand of Islam that embraces modern science.

The group, known as the Gulen movement, is involved in charter schools nationwide, including the School of Science and Technology in Corpus Christi. The schools provide jobs for Turkish nationals who relocate to the United States. They are the kind of educated workforce that immigration authorities should be encouraged to grant work visas. And the Corpus Christi school met state accountability standards. Many area traditional public schools wish they could claim the same.

The Gulen movement describes its generous outreach efforts to state-level politicians as an effort to foster goodwill and a better understanding of Turkish culture, which it says is part of Gulen's teachings.

Meanwhile, Gulen is the Turkish government's most wanted man. Turkey wants him extradited. That is not the purview of state-level lawmakers. But policies and funding for charter schools are a state-level decision.

We don't fault the Gulen movement for any of those connections. If anything, we're impressed at how astutely the movement has gone about extending its influence (and we don't mean "influence" in a bad way). Today's state-level lawmakers often end up in Congress. The Gulen movement appears to have gone about its movement in the good, old-fashioned American way. It's no different from a restaurateur offering to comp a police officer's meal. The restaurateur is just being friendly and supportive of law enforcement.

But the public officials on the receiving end of hospitable offers must meet a different standard. The police officer can find a polite way to say no but thanks. And state senators and representatives should do likewise with offers of international travel. But the laws of various states don't compel them. Texas, for example, allows fact-finding excursions. And, according to reports, plenty of interesting facts about Turkey, its culture and Islam are found on these trips.

Sen. Eddie Lucio, D-Brownsville, was among the Texas lawmakers who went to Turkey. And while the reasons to go are important to the Gulen movement, the bigger question is why was it important to him and his constituents. A trip to Monte Carlo, which by mere mention of the name sounds like a junket, might be easier to justify as a fact-finding excursion.  The tip of the Texas coast, with Mexico so near, might be an attractive site for a casino.

We don't mean to single out Lucio. Among his other colleagues who visited Turkey and still are in the Legislature are Reps. Alma Allen, D-Houston, and Donna Howard-D-Austin, and Sen. Joan Huffman, R-Houston. Huffman helped orchestrate the gutting of the Public Integrity Unit that oversaw ethics investigations of state officials. All should share with their constituents the valuable facts and insights they gathered in Turkey and how those facts and insights might change their public policy decisions in ways that matter to their constituents.