NEW YORK – The Clinton Foundation was engaged in a pay-to-play scheme to obtain Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's support for giving asylum to the Turkish Muslim preacher the Erdogan government holds responsible for the attempted coup, Fethullah Gulen, according to sources close to the Turkish government and emails released by WikiLeaks and Judicial Watch.

Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin sent several emails that suggest she was the intermediary between Gulen’s organization in Saylorsburg, Pennsylvania, in the Pocono Mountains and the Clinton Foundation.

Sources close to the Turkish government have explained to WND on the condition of anonymity their concern that a Clinton Foundation pay-to-play scheme is behind the Obama administration refusal to extradite Gulen, the radical Turkish imam the Turkish government considers the mastermind behind the failed July 15 coup.

The Gulen movement boasts an estimated 8 million followers worldwide and $50 billion in assets.

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One of Gulen’s two lieutenants in the United States, Gokhan Ozkok, sent Abedin an email on May 22, 2009, praising Clinton and requesting a renewal of contact.

It was four months after Clinton became secretary of state.

“The Turkish American community has been believing in the friendship of Secretary Clinton since the day we first met her,” Ozkok wrote.

“Secretary Clinton is also the beginning of and the reason for our success in ‘converting’ the Turkish American community and its leaders to the Democratic Party and its values and leadership," he said. "We are proud of her and we would be happy if we can reestablish the contact with her after a long time.”

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Abedin also corresponded with Gulen's second lieutenant in the United States, Recap Ozkan, a major donor to the Clinton Foundation and a member of the Clinton Global Initiative. He is the president of the Turkish Cultural Center in New York City.

On June 23, 2009, Ozkan sent Abedin an email saying he had heard Clinton wanted to meet Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, a Turkish academic and diplomat who at the time was the secretary-general of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, the body of 56 Muslims nations that calls itself the "collective voice of the Muslim world."

“Dr. Ihsanoglu says he wants to visit her at her residence because of her medical situation,” Ozkan wrote, referencing the fall Clinton took on June 17, 2009, in the State Department basement in which she broke her elbow.

“Dr. Ihsanoglu is also a very close friend of your parents and sends his greetings to you,” Ozkan wrote to Abedin.

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As WND reported, Abedin's family runs the Institute for Muslim Minority Affairs, which was founded by the Saudi government to help promote the establishment of Islamic law worldwide. Huma Abedin served on the editorial board of the institute's journal with Abdullah Omar Naseef, who founded a financial institution prior to 9/11 to fund Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida.

On Sept. 28, 2009, Ozkok sent Abedin an email with the subject line “Turkish American Invitation to Secretary Clinton" in which he communicated that the Rumi Forum – a group for which Fetullah Gulen had been the honorary president since 1999 – wanted to give Hillary Clinton “the prestigious 2009 Rumi Peace and Dialogue Award for Extraordinary Service.”

Wikileaks has tracked Gulen since 2012, when it began publishing some 5 million emails from the Texas-based “global intelligence” community Stratfor, including a Stratfor internal email dated Nov. 18, 2009, warning that the Fetullah Gulen Community, known as the “Gulen movement,” controlled millions of dollars and was in the process of establishing a network of some 160 high schools in some 25 U.S. states to promote a radical Islamic ideology under the guise of being a democracy movement.

The warning was repeated in an Aug. 12, 2014, memo released by WikiLeaks addressed to John Podesta, chairman of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign.

Podesta was forwarded a notice that the State Department had notified the National Security Council that Turkish charter schools in America were being established by Turkish nationals “with questionable credentials.”

The schools had benign-sounding names, such as Ohio Horizon Science Academies, as a guise to teach radical Islamic theology.

Financial ties to Clintons

Leaders of the Gulen movement have donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, as well as to the Clinton Foundation, the Daily Caller reported in November 2015.

One of the biggest donors is Gulen lieutenant Ozkan, who is listed on the Turkish Cultural Center’s website as a member of the Clinton Global Initiative.

Ozkhan gave between $500,001 and $1 million to the Clinton Foundation in 2015.

The Podesta Group, managed by John Podesta’s brother Tony Podesta, filed a lobbying registration form effective May 12, 2016, disclosing the group had been hired by the Alliance for Shared Values in New York, a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization that operates as an umbrella organization for various Gulen-affiliated organizations in the United States, including the Rumi Forum.

'Terrorist organization'

Since his self-imposed exile to the United States in 1999, Gulen has operated what Turkey has characterized as the Fetullah Terrorist Organization, FETO, under the guise of providing educational services.

The Erdogan government has charged that a group within the Turkish army associated with FETO launched the coup attempt in Turkey on July 15 that resulted in the deaths of 240 people.

“Under their deviant religious ideology, FETO considers it legitimate to engage in all kinds of self-defensive deception, conspiracy, trap and illegal activities to achieve its objectives,” states a 2016 bulletin prepared by Turkey’s government-run press service, the Anadolu Agency, titled “FETO’s Coup Attempt in Turkey.

“With years of confidential training and dissuasion activities, members of the terrorist organization have gained a level of professionalism beyond the comprehension of ordinary people,” the bulletin continues. “Its members operate with a radical ‘devotion’ and see themselves as the ‘chosen ones’; they switch identities and commit all types of illegal acts, including murder if need be.”

The Obama administration says it is reviewing the Turkish government’s demand that Gulen be extradited.

Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim warned in July there “could even be a questioning of our friendship” if the U.S. doesn't hand over Gulen.

On Tuesday, Deputy Prime Minister Mehmet Şimşek declared at a press conference in Washington that Turkey has overwhelming evidence Gulen was behind the failed July 15 coup attempt.

"We don't have any doubt that Fetullah Gulen was the person behind the coup attempt. There are nearly half a million pieces of evidence including informative statements that we have presented to the U.S. [government] regarding the issue," Şimşek said at the 35th Annual Conference on U.S.-Turkey Relations organized by the Turkey-U.S. Business Council and the American-Turkish Council (ATC).

On Oct. 19, the 43rd session of the OIC Council of Foreign Ministers meeting in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, as well as the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, OIC, voted to list FETO as a terrorist group.

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