A court case involving a New York school linked to the faith-based Gülen movement has fueled concerns that Turkey is extending its yearslong crackdown on the movement to the United States by exploiting its legal system.
The case centers on a loan taken out by Brooklyn Amity School in 2011 from the now-defunct Bank Asya to purchase its building, The New York Sun reported. The bank’s liquidators claim the school still owes $12.5 million, while the school says it already paid the debt with collateral it deposited when it took out the original loan before the bank’s seizure.
Court filings show that both parties agreed in 2023 that the collateral had been applied to the debt. The bank’s liquidators later sought to reverse that agreement, arguing that a pending case in Turkey prevented them from accessing the collateral funds.
While the bank’s lawyers described the matter as an ordinary financial dispute, the school’s lawyers said the lawsuit is part of a broader Turkish government campaign targeting institutions affiliated with the movement. They cited alleged discovery misconduct and systematic harassment of donors as evidence that the case was politically motivated.
Bank Asya, once one of Turkey’s largest commercial banks and known for its ties to the Gülen movement, was put under the control of the Savings Deposit Insurance Fund (TMSF), a government body typically tasked with managing insolvent banks, before a 2016 coup attempt and was later dissolved.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has targeted followers of the Gülen movement, inspired by the US-based cleric Fethullah Gülen, who died in 2024, since corruption investigations in December 2013 implicated him as well as some members of his family and inner circle. He dismissed the probes as a Gülenist conspiracy and later designated the movement as a terrorist organization in May 2016, intensifying a sweeping crackdown after the coup attempt in July of the same year that he accused Gülen of orchestrating. The movement denies involvement in the coup attempt or any terrorist activity.
The school told the court that its annual net income fell from $2.3 million before 2016 to $640,000 in later years due to pressure exerted by Turkish authorities. According to the court filings, some students had their passports canceled, families were threatened with terrorism-related investigations for paying tuition and criminal probes were launched into donors.
The school further alleged that the plaintiffs concealed key information by failing to disclose a ruling from an İstanbul commercial court that dismissed a lawsuit they cited to justify why the collateral funds could not be applied to the debt. The school asked the court to impose sanctions for discovery misconduct under New York law and dismiss the case.
Supporters of the school say the case fits a broader pattern in which Turkish authorities have targeted Gülen-linked schools abroad through pressure in an effort to transfer control of them to the Maarif Foundation, a state-backed educational body. According to official figures, 232 schools linked to the movement in 21 countries have been taken over and transferred to the Maarif Foundation since 2016.
The New York Sun report recalled that the US State Department’s latest human rights report said the Turkish government had engaged in a global campaign to targeting members of the Gülen movement while also pressuring other governments to take action against people linked to the movement without due process.
The newspaper said the case could become a significant test of whether US courts are able to recognize and prevent foreign governments from using civil litigation to pursue political objectives abroad.
A legal analyst quoted by the newspaper said Turkey was exploiting American courts to conduct lawfare against its political opponents, adding that allowing seized foreign assets to be turned into litigation weapons against Americans undermines the integrity of the US legal system.
John Thomas, a political strategist and the managing director of Nestpoint Associates, also warned that sophisticated legal campaigns could exploit blind spots in the American justice system.
The report also noted that US courts have begun acting to counter such campaigns. It reminded that a US federal judge last year rejected a request by the Turkish government seeking the financial records of five people linked to the movement. The judge cited concerns that the case was politically motivated and part of a broader campaign of transnational repression.
Organizations such as Human Rights Watch and Freedom House have identified Turkey as a leading perpetrator of cross-border suppression of dissent, citing a pattern of politically motivated extradition requests, surveillance and pressure on host governments. The U.S. State Department and the United Nations have also raised concerns about Ankara’s misuse of international mechanisms to pursue critics abroad, warning that such practices undermine international legal norms and endanger the rights of exiled individuals.
