Turkish Graduate Student Association 9/26/2012
Fetullah Gulen Ministries
TGSA is a UMass graduate student organization founded to integrate Turkish community in Five-College area with Amherst community and other university organizations. Any UMass graduate student, faculty and staff can become a member of the association regardless of his/her national origin, race, religion, sexual orientation and physical disabilities. All events and activities of the organization target the communication of different cultures and background and they are open to all community.
- President – Murat Tonga
- Secretary – Hus Ok
- Treasurer – Gulen Yesilbag
- Abdulkadir Kocak 9/27/2012
- Ahmet Hakan Coskun 9/27/2012
- Erhan Simsek 10/1/2013
- Fatih Comert 9/27/2012
- GSS Vice President 9/18/2012
- Gulen Yesilbag 9/27/2012
- Hazal Kurtcu 9/27/2012
- Hus Ok 9/27/2012
- Ilgim Dara 9/27/2012
- Murat Tonga 9/26/2012
- Nabi Shakhanov 9/27/2012
- Nesrin Senbil 9/27/2012
- Omer Durmus 10/2/2012
- Orhan Akal 9/27/2013
- Sema Bagci-Kaya 10/1/2012
- Seray Ergene 9/26/2012
- Sukru Elci 9/27/2012
- Tulay Varol 9/27/2012
In 1999, Turkish television aired footage of Gülen delivering sermons to a crowd of followers in which he revealed his aspirations for an Islamist Turkey ruled by Shari‘a (Islamic law) as well as the methods that should be used to attain that goal. In the sermons, he said:
You must move in the arteries of the system without anyone noticing your existence until you reach all the power centers … until the conditions are ripe, they [the followers] must continue like this. If they do something prematurely, the world will crush our heads, and Muslims will suffer everywhere, like in the tragedies in Algeria, like in 1982 [in] Syria … like in the yearly disasters and tragedies in Egypt. The time is not yet right. You must wait for the time when you are complete and conditions are ripe, until we can shoulder the entire world and carry it … You must wait until such time as you have gotten all the state power, until you have brought to your side all the power of the constitutional institutions in Turkey … Until that time, any step taken would be too early—like breaking an egg without waiting the full forty days for it to hatch. It would be like killing the chick inside. The work to be done is [in] confronting the world. Now, I have expressed my feelings and thoughts to you all—in confidence … trusting your loyalty and secrecy. I know that when you leave here—[just] as you discard your empty juice boxes, you must discard the thoughts and the feelings that I expressed here.
