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Sudan Closes Gulen Schools in Response to Turkish Government’s Request | ASHARQ AL-AWSAT English Archive 2005 -2017
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The Sudanese government announced the closure of schools associated with Turkish opposition cleric Fethullah Gulen’s movement which is known as a “parallel entity”. The closure is a response to the Turkish government’s request to close the schools, and they will be turned into schools run by a Sudanese company.

Sudanese authorities did not disclose how the ownership of these schools would be transferred to a private company in light of the Turkish ambassador in Khartoum’s statements that Sudan has nationalised these schools. Information from the Sudanese Ministry of Education was unobtainable.

The spokesman for the Sudanese Foreign Ministry Ambassador Garib Allah Khidir said that “The Turkish government has asked Khartoum to close down Gulen schools” and that his ministry informed the Ministry of Education of this. He added that the two schools in question “taught more than 800 students of different nationalities, and most of them were Sudanese”. He continued by saying that “The Ministry of Education has turned them into schools run by a Sudanese company in order to prevent students from being negatively affected”.

It was not possible to obtain information from the relevant ministry with regards to how the ownership of these schools would be transferred to the private Sudanese company. However, the Turkish ambassador to Sudan Jamal Al-Din Aydin told the Turkish news agency Anadolu that the Sudanese government has launched a project to nationalise Gulen schools, and asked the Turkish Ministry of Education to send a delegation to provide assistance during the nationalisation process.