The Defeat Of Evolution In Turkish Schools

The Guardian blog site posted an entry about Harun Yahya’s literary activities on 20 August, 2007. The site, the largest in the UK, described Harun Yahya’s victory in his intellectual struggle against Darwinists in Turkey:

“... Harun Yahya, which is the pen-name of Adnan Oktar, is a sort of spiritual head of a vast Islamic apologist outfit in Turkey, which has reached Islamic publishers in London, Canada and the US. … he has made inroads with Muslims all the way from Indonesia to America.

His books cover topics including refutations of atheism and Darwinism, romanticism as a weapon of Satan, anti-evolution … science, affirmation of miracles, and attacks on Freemasonry, Zionists, Buddhists, and terrorism (Darwin"s fault). …

Since around 1998, Harun Yahya"s operations have focused emphatically on promoting Islamic creationism. Recently, his operations sent a glossy 770 page book about creationism to European and US scientists. …

Journalist Tony Ortega wrote a revealing piece in a local US newspaper about BAV [Bilim Arastirma Vakfi / Science Research Foundation]. It discussed … the defeat of evolution in Turkish schools:

But beginning in 1998, BAV spearheaded an effort to attack Turkish academics who taught Darwinian theory. … seven years after BAV"s offensive began, says Istanbul University forensics professor Umit Sayin, the battle is over.

‘There is no fight against the creationists now. They have won the war,’ Sayin tells the Pitch from his home in Istanbul. ‘In 1998, I was able to motivate six members of the Turkish Academy of Sciences to speak out against the creationist movement. Today, it"s impossible to motivate anyone. …’”