DUSHANBE, Tajikistan

Tajik President Emomali Rahmon has authorized the take over and renaming of a network of schools run by the U.S.-based preacher, Fethullah Gulen, in the country, according to Tajikistan's national news agency NIAT Hovar.

In accordance with the decision signed by Rahmon, seven schools run by the Selale Educational Institution are going to be turned into public schools, and renamed as "schools for gifted children", the agency said.

The decision to shut down the Gulen-run schools, and reopen them as state-run schools with different names was announced in May.

On May 21, Tajikistan’s Minister of Education and Science Nuriddin Said stated that the ministry had prepared all necessary legal documents to shut down the schools, which had been under an investigation since early 2015.

The schools would become state schools at the start of the following academic year, the minister said.

The schools would also undergo changes in the pattern of their education system and curriculum, Abdujabbor Aliyev, head of the ministry’s Early Childhood and Primary Education Department, said.

“The founder of these schools, the Selale Educational Institutions, will also lose its status,” Alivey said.

The first Gulen-run school opened in Tajikistan in 1992. 

The Turkish government accuses Fethullah Gulen and his so-called Gulen movement of forming a "parallel state", which refers to a purported group of Turkish bureaucrats and senior officials embedded in the country's institutions, including the judiciary and police, who are allegedly trying to undermine the Turkish government.