20 August 2016•Update: 21 August 2016
COPENHAGEN, Denmark
More than 350 students in Denmark have pulled out of Gulen-linked schools following the July 15 defeated coup in Turkey, blamed on the Fetullah Terrorist Organization (FETO), according to local media reports.
According to TV 2, a total of 366 former students at FETO-linked schools have not registered for the new semester.
FETO has been operating in Denmark with seven primary schools, four high schools, and three boarding schools.
The TV channel said some of the FETO-linked schools have already lost an estimated 40 percent of their students.
Hasan Huseyin Mor, principal at a local school linked to Gulen, said he could understand the parents’ fears and concerns.
“Their children could be labeled terrorists. We’re not involved in politics in school, but we can understand the parents’ fears.”
Sevda Sahin, a Turkish national, charged that FETO-linked schools brainwash children.
In Romania, dozens of students also reportedly dropped out of FETO-linked schools.
Head of IMM TURK, a Turkish association, Nazmi Dogan, told Anadolu Agency he too removed his child from a FETO-linked school.
"We removed our daughter from the traitors' school, which misleads [people] with an artificial success [story]," Dogan said.
Turkey's government has said the July 15 defeated coup, which left 240 people martyred and nearly 2,200 injured, was organized by followers of Fetullah Gulen, who has lived in self-imposed exile in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania since 1999, and his FETO network.
Gulen is accused of leading a long-running campaign to overthrow the state through the infiltration of Turkish institutions, particularly the military, police, and judiciary, forming what is commonly known as the parallel state.
