… A geneticist at IstanbulUniversity, Haluk Ertan, sums up the situation succinctly: “Turkey,” he says, “is the headquarters of creationism in the Middle East.” “Not just the Middle East, the world,” insists Tarkan Yavas, the dapper, youthful director of the Istanbul-based Foundation for Scientific Research (BAV).
… with hundreds of books to its name, the 15-year-old BAV has an impressive output of work….
Headed by a charismatic preacher, Adnan Oktar, BAV´s latest production is the 770-page Atlas of Creation which it sent free of charge to scientists and schools in Britain, Scandinavia, France and Turkey in February.
Page after page juxtaposes photographs of fossils and living species, claiming the similarities prove the fraudulence of claims that species adapt over time.
The book goes on to blame evolutionary theory for communism, Nazism and September 11th. “Darwinism is the only philosophy which values conflict,” the text says.
… A survey last year showed that only 25 per cent of Turks accept evolution. According to another poll in 2005, 50 per cent of biology teachers question or reject it.
“Darwinism is dying in Turkey, thanks to us,” says Tarkan Yavas, vowing to work until Turkish culture is cleansed of what he calls atheist materialism. “Darwinism breeds immorality and an immoral Turkey is of no use to the European Union at all.”
… Like BAV, which has organised hundreds of conferences on creationism over the past decade as well as a recent flurry of American-style “creation museums,” opponents of creationism are increasingly taking their arguments to the Turkish public.
The last few months have seen a series of scientific conferences in central Anatolian towns.
