In Turkey, fertile ground for creationism (USA- The Washington Post - November 8, 2009)

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18 February, 2018

On 8 November, 2009, The Washington Post, published in Washington DC and enjoying a global readership as a well-established political daily, carried a report titled “In Turkey, fertile ground for creationism.” The Washington Post, one of America’s three leading dailies with its circulation of around 1 million, carried extracts from an interview with Mr. Adnan Oktar, once again noting the effect of the works of Harun Yahya in the rejection of the theory of evolution:

... creationism ... [has] blossomed within Muslim Turkey... Turks have aggressively made the case that Charles Darwin's theory is scientifically wrong and is the underlying source of most of the world's conflicts because it excludes God from human affairs.

"DARWIN IS THE WORST FASCIST THERE HAS EVER BEEN, AND THE WORST RACIST HISTORY HAS EVER WITNESSED," WRITES HARUN YAHYA, THE MOST ASSERTIVE AND BEST-KNOWN CRITIC OF EVOLUTION IN TURKEY, AND LONG A FAVORITE OF MORE CONSERVATIVE AMERICAN CREATIONISTS.

... The Islamic anti-evolution campaign is taking place in Turkey, and not Egypt or Saudi Arabia...

... In a year in which conferences worldwide are celebrating the 200th anniversary of Darwin's birth and his contribution to science, THE BATTLE AGAINST DARWINIAN THINKING IN TURKEY HAS BECOME SOMETHING OF A ROUT, EVEN AMONG ASPIRING SCIENCE TEACHERS.

... "Why I'm so interested in seeing creationism succeed in Turkey is that evolution is an evil concept that has done such damage to society," said [John] Morris, a Christian ...

The most visible Turkish proponent of creationism is... Adnan Oktar, who writes and appears daily on his own two-hour television show under the alias Harun Yahya. He and a revolving group of about 30 writers and young scientists have produced more than 200 widely distributed books and videos attacking evolution as equivalent to atheism, communism and worse.

In 2006, Oktar CREATED AN INTERNATIONAL STIR... Published on almost 800 pages of glossy stock, the "Atlas of Creation" sets out to show that creatures today are essentially the same as those that lived, and became fossilized, eons ago...

Speaking in his home and television studio overlooking the Bosporus, Oktar asserted responsibility for "defeating" Darwinism in Turkey... HE HAS CREATED A FAR-REACHING ANTI-EVOLUTION EMPIRE, he said, while American creationists and advocates of intelligent design still struggle to be heard.

The 53-year-old Oktar, dressed entirely in white, said he is not a scientist but an author "following the path of Allah." ...