Michael Flynn's consulting company was hired by Inovo BV, a company owned by Kamil Ekim Alptekin. Alptekin also chairs the Turkish-American Business Council, an arm of the Foreign Economic Relations Board of Turkey (DEIK). On November 8, 2016 (election day in the United States), "The Hill" published an op-ed by Flynn in which he called for the US to back Erdoğan's government and alleged that the regime's opponent, Pennsylvania-based opposition cleric Fethullah Gülen, headed a "vast global network" that fit "the description of a dangerous sleeper terror network".