Adnan Oktar's Activities Concerning Darwinism in Seed Magazine

In its September issue the well-known scientific magazine Seed devoted considerable space to Adnan Oktar’s continuing global activities. The article in question described the Science Research Foundation, of which Adnan Oktar is the honorary president and which engages in international activities aimed at demonstrating the invalidity of the theory of evolution, as “mounting one of the most potent offensives against evolution.”

The article also contained the following statements:

He"s [Adnan Oktar] the 50-year-old founder of Bilim Araştirma Vakfi ("Scientific Research Foundation"), a creationist organization mounting one of the most potent offensives against evolution outside of the United States.

In its latest campaign, BAV has opened more than 80 "museums" in restaurants, malls, and city halls across Turkey, each stocked with fossils, posters, and eager volunteers. [They instruct] … passersby that evolution cannot explain biology"s complexity and is against the word of God.

But unlike its western counterparts, Oktar"s group claims Darwin is responsible for communism, fascism, and terrorism. Terrorists, according to Oktar, are "social Darwinists hiding under the cloak of religion," while communists, still active in Turkey, are in "bloody alliance" with Darwinism. "Evolution is a communist and fascist belief," offers Tarkan Yavas, BAV"s president. "The Muslim community understands that now."

Turkey is among the most Western of Muslim nations. It teaches evolution in its schools… In 1985 the minister of education mandated that creationism be included in science textbooks. … Ümit Sayin, a neurologist at Istanbul University and outspoken critic of Turkish creationism, estimates that the number of university-educated Turks who understand evolution has dropped to 20 percent from 40 percent over the past 15 years…

Oktar claims to have 4.5 million followers worldwide, who read his hundreds of books and essays and have seen the dozens of television documentaries that BAV produces and provides free of charge to Turkish TV stations. BAV"s Web sites offer downloadable PowerPoint presentations and questions to challenge science teachers. The foundation organizes anti-evolution conferences and petitions and runs a telemarketing scheme to sell books by Harun Yahya (Oktar"s pen name), which are available globally in 29 languages…

In August, Science published an analysis of global public attitudes toward evolution showing that, out of 34 sample countries, the US and Turkey had the lowest acceptance of Darwin"s theories.