KPSS study houses, which were established to prepare students for the central and institutional exams within the scope of the education and graduate activities of the community, played an important role in the dominance of the community in the critical institutions of the state by being staffed in many public institutions and organizations in Turkey.
In this article, I will try to share the information that I personally witnessed for a year and a half about the stages of the creation of the work houses, the measures applied to protect the privacy of the work houses, the daily programs applied in the work houses and the student selection process for the work houses. I would like to bring to the attention of the public through you the remarkable points that I think will be confirmed by many members of the community, who stay in the working houses within the scope of the “public privacy structure” of the community and become civil servants.
History of Working Houses
Established to prepare students for central and institution exams as part of the community’s education and graduation services, KPSS workhouses have played a key role in the rule of the state’s critical institutions by staffing many public institutions and institutions in Turkey.
In this article, I will try to share information about the student election process in the working houses with the stages of the creation of working houses, the measures implemented to protect the privacy of working houses, and the daily programs applied in the working houses, as someone who has stayed in the workhouse for about a year and a half. I would like to bring to the attention of the public through you the remarkable points that I think will be confirmed by many of the members of the community who are officers by staying in the workhouses under the “public privacy structure” of the community.
History of Working Houses
Calling itself a Hizmet movement and embarking on a coup attempt on July 15 2016, the Community implemented the workhouses, which it describes as “educational and graduate activities” in great secrecy/privacy.
The community first started the activities of judge-prosecutor houses in order to be effective in the courthouse and later established KPSS work houses in order to have a say in other public institutions that are seen as public confidential organizations. KPSS study houses were started in Ankara and were established in big cities such as Istanbul, Izmir and Konya in the following years.
In the early days, the majority of the university students who graduated from the departments that were able to take the KPSS-A group exam or were studying in the last year and were qualified/rated as 5-5 and staying in the student houses and dormitories belonging to the Community, were accepted to the study houses.
After the 2010s, there has been a significant increase in the number of students staying in study houses and in the private dormitories of the Community, since most of the university students who regularly attend the conversations in the private dormitories of community or come and go to the the university student houses of community and most of the students staying in the community houses are accepted to the study houses.
In addition, since the staffing studies, which were carried out in a small amount and with great care in the first years in the public sector, were carried out with the aim of dominating every institution in the recent period, a serious human resource was needed. In the following years, the responsible brothers in the units that carried out the graduate and education consultancy activities of the Community; In order to realize GÜLEN’s goals of “employing a large number of personnel in public institutions in order to effectively exist in all state institutions”, they have opened their study houses in different provinces since the mid-2000s and attached great importance to the placement of all members of the community in study houses.
After the 2010 years, there has been a significant increase in the number of students staying in the working houses and their homes due to the admission of most of the university students and students who attend the conversations in private dormitories of the community, who attend the conversations in university student houses and go to the conversations.
In addition, a serious human resource has been needed because the public’s first years of staffing have been carried out with a large amount of cuz and a large amount of rigorous attention. In the following years, the responsible brothers in the departments that carried out the activities of the Cemaat’s graduation and education advisory were very important to the placement of all community students in working homes by opening their workhouses in different provinces from the mid-2000 to achieve GÜLEN’s “placing many people in public institutions to effectively exist in all state institutions” goals.
Student Selection Process for Working Houses
The opinions and evaluations of the brothers in charge of the house to which the students living in the student houses or dormitories belonging to the community during their university education are affiliated, the Regional Student Officers (BTM), the Grand Regional Student Officers (BBTM) and the brothers who are responsible for the graduates played an important role in the admission of these students to the KPSS study centers. However, some children of shopkeepers/trustees and some students staying in state dormitories or in single houses which are defined as those who love social life, were also accepted to study houses.
Senior or graduate students staying in student residences that are considered to be accepted into study homes or in private student dormitories affiliated with the community were interviewed by educational consultant brothers/sisters who stayed in the study home and started to work in the public sector a short time ago.
The older brothers/sisters who are in charge of the workhouses, who have just started working in the civil service, provided the list of university students who have reached the graduation stage in each province of Turkey from the Educational Advisor responsible for them and made a series of interviews/pre-interviews with the students staying in the dormitories belonging to the community in the provinces where these students were educated.
In these interviews, in order to determine the good/bad habits and reliability (level of commitment) of the students; the departments they study, which institution they plan to take the exam, whether they have girlfriends, whether they have any bad habits such as smoking, how often they visit their families, their political views on daily politics, etc. questions were asked.
In these interviews, all kinds of details to categorize the students to be taken into the study houses according to the critical institutions that are planned to be strong-dominance were transferred to an information pool by the education consultants through high-security and several-level encrypted computer programs.
On the other hand, female students staying in the community house were admitted to the study houses after being interviewed whether they would marry (whether they would marry from the catalogue) with the spouse candidates determined by the older brothers/sisters from within the community and that the female students who were closed should open their headscarves when they became civil servants.
In addition, students who were asked to work in the courthouse, civil service, security or intelligence institutions were grouped on the basis of profession according to their security and loyalty to the community and subjected to serious eliminations.
Afterwards, students who would prepare for the institution exams in the study houses were divided into groups by making use of the information collected in the “public-secret/privacy structure information pool”. When creating study homes, priority was given to placing students studying in the same province or similar departments in study homes close to each other.
Measures Applied in Working Houses
After a student group/home community of four or five people who would stay in the study houses was selected, the student who served the most in the community and was seen as the most reliable was determined as the student study house brother. The communication between the teacher/brother in charge of the house working in any public institution and the study house was carried out through the student selected as the house elder.
Students staying in the study house could contact their families and relatives through kiosks or payphones. In addition only the officers/teachers who were responsible for the home were called via non-camera button phones with operational (noname) lines allocated to each study house without internet connection, and the necessary books for the study house’s food needs or to study for the exam were obtained.
In an emergency, a call could be made to the elder brother of the house or the elder brother, who is called the “representative of the public privacy organization-structure” who is registered on the keypad phones. Although the daily needs of the study house were generally met by the responsible house elder, in some cases the students staying at home would also go to the markets in close distance to meet their needs.
After the student group to stay at the study home was determined, the brother in charge of the study house or the students who would stay at home would make the study home ready by renting the house on behalf of a sympathetic or unrelated third party member of the community or on behalf of a community member who has just earned a job. The study houses, which were prepared for critical institutions, where students would stay were rented on behalf of unrelated people to whom the tradesmen brothers were references.
The study house has been rented and a process in which confidentiality/precaution is of vital importance has begun for students. Students staying in the study house have less and less contact with their family members for years, and they have started to get used to a life based on the study home by moving away from the circle of friends in the university and in the community house.
Students who started to stay in the study house could not use a personal phone until they passed the exam of any public institution and left the study home. In the following process, the students who would give their contact information to the institutions were asked to destroy the telephone devices they used during the university period, change their old telephone numbers and submit a new number.
In addition, a new pseudonym/code name was given to each student admitted to the study from student houses or community dormitories to ensure confidentiality. Students were also not allowed to use pseudonyms they had used before in the community.
Because the members of the community, who would serve as civil servants in a public institution, were requested to forget the past of the community in the region and to end their contact with the regionalists and to strictly abide by the precaution. Students living in other study homes were never contacted and a student living in a study home would not know the address of the other study home and the students staying at home, with some exceptions. Students staying in the study house would hide their names and surnames in case they encountered/met students staying at the study home other than their own roommates.
Students staying in study houses were not allowed to enroll in any private teaching institution or take private lessons, especially in the community classrooms that provide preparatory education for KPSS-A group courses.
As the KPSS and institution exams approached, the intensity of study in the study houses would increase and all students would focus on the exam day. A few days before the exam, the students at the study house were subjected to an intensified spirituality program and thoroughly motivated for the exam.
Preparation Processes for Institutional Exams and Interviews at Working Houses
On the night before the exam, the brothers responsible for the study house would give the exam questions provided by the elder brothers by pressing the Qur’an to some students they had determined in advance, making them swear that they would not say anything to anyone about the events they were dealing with tonight. However, exam questions were not given to some students who were not evaluated as 5-5 and who were not considered safe enough or who were predicted to be successful in the exam with their own knowledge.
The other students who stayed in the house where the students who would not be given exam questions and were seen as 5-5 would secretly go to the house of the civil servant, who is their elder brother or to another study house the night before the exam.
The older brothers in charge of the study house used to memorize the central exam questions they received from the principals/brothers they were attached to, under the name of “Surah Al-Fath reading” to the students they deemed reliable who stayed in the study home.
Approximately 70%-80% of the questions to be asked in the exam to the 5-5 students staying in the study house were distributed as photocopies as different questions and taken back after they were solved. After memorizing, the question papers were destroyed immediately.
By removing some of the exam questions to be made by OSYM, it was tried to prevent the students in the community from getting high scores at the same level. Thus, the students belonging to the community who solved/memorized 70%-80% of the KPSS exam questions the night before, occupied the first percentile of each KPSS score group and got high enough scores to apply for the written exams of almost all public institutions.
Students staying in the study house were requested to apply for these exams even if they were not going to take the career institution exams opened by all public institutions according to their KPSS-A group scores.
Thanks to the “Rabbit candidate” method, the community officials tried to ensure that the members of the community who got high scores were invited to the exams of the targeted institutions to fill most of the quota that could take the exam and to prevent the non-members of the community who are described as negative/competitors, from being invited to the written exams of many institutions.
Because the more students from the community applied to the exams held by each institution, the more members of the community would be admitted to the relevant institution. On the other hand, the precaution, which is the indispensable rule of the community, was tried to be applied by allowing a small number of successful candidates who are not members of the community to pass the public institution exams.
Years ago, the written exam questions of many public institutions were captured by the brothers of the community who started to work in many public institutions and worked in the personnel units of the relevant institutions or in the information processing units and the students who stayed in the study house who were deemed suitable for that public institution, were solved by taking an oath by pressing the Qur’an again. In the institution exams, members of the community were asked to leave a few of the questions asked in each field blank or to make mistakes and not get full points.
After the written exams, the students who stayed in the study houses started to look for references for the interview stage by reaching people who were influential in the bureaucracy or politics. Brothers, who were educational consultants, advised the students who were going to be interviewed to find a little reference at a high level.
Afterwards, the students from the community tried to comply with the precaution by revealing their references and hiding their affiliation to the community during their conversations with the non- community employees in the institution, after they passed the institution exam with the guidance of their institution-unit elder brothers.
The students who stayed at the working house and were entitled to take the interview after passing the written exams of the public institutions were also prepared for the institution interviews by the elder brothers who worked as “educational consultants” in the community houses that were rented as “interview houses” according to the importance of the institutions.
Depending on the importance of the institution to be interviewed, the education counselors used to forward the interview questions they obtained through the members of the community to the members of the community who were planned to be placed in this institution.
Later, in the interview rehearsals, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, TRT, Court of Accounts, District Governorship, Central Bank, Ministries etc. members of the community working in executive positions in important public institutions would go behind a closed curtain and ask the members of the community who had passed the written exam, from the interview questions they had chosen at random.
Thus, the students who will enter the institution interviews were given the excitement of real interviews, and it was ensured that the students did not encounter any surprises during the interviews. Later the members of the community who passed the exam and interview stages successfully formed the majority of the staff in many institutions and competed among themselves in order to rise to important positions for the community.
As a result, the work house service, which started to prepare university students for institutional exams with good intentions, as in areas such as charity and social assistance has become a tool used to maintain control in all public institutions with the machiavellian/opportunist approaches that “every way is permissible to reach the goal”.
In this context, the study houses, which were established in order to realize the goal of the community administrators in the first years, “we should have our friends in every institution”, allowed the university graduates of the community to be staffed in the public sector in a controlled/planned manner until 15 July. Some of the members of the community who were staffed in the police, civil service, courthouse and other public institutions knowingly and willingly served the interests of the community by acting in accordance with the instructions of their elder brothers/imams, without questioning them with group psychology.