Whitewashed History Textbooks Made “Safe For Democracy”
Records of two military coups in the Turkish Republic’s recent past have been removed from official history textbooks for year-eight students, according to the Education Ministry’s Board of Education and Discipline.
The sections on the military coup of Sept. 12, 1980, and the military intervention of Feb. 28, 1997, were […]
A complaint by Adnan Oktar (also called Harun Yahya) led to the banning of another internet site yesterday (September 24). This time, the 2nd Civil Court of First Instance of Gebze in Istanbul banned the internet site of the Union of Education and Scientific Workers, Egitim-Sen, egitimsen.org.tr. [The Nigde branch website is still available, […]
Adnan Oktar (aka Harun Yahya), the Turkish creationist cult leader, who sued to close down the world-renowned scientist Richard Dawkins’ website, has hatched another wild attention-seeking scheme. He has offered to pay 10 trillion Turkish lira to anyone “who produces a single intermediate-form fossil demonstrating evolution” – a sum […]
Mustafa Akyol’s take on the recent “anti-Crusader” incident in Kayseri (click for full article):
The most tragic-comic news story of this week came from the central Anatolian town of Kayseri. A film crew was shooting a documentary about the medieval past of the town, and they decided to use the city’s ancient castle as a stage. […]
Almost half [45%] of urban Turkish women believe economic independence for women is unnecessary, and younger generations seem to share this view more than the older generations, according to [a newly published poll by the Women Entrepreneurs Association of Turkey, or KAGIDER]. Almost 50 percent of women between ages 15 and 19 believed a woman’s […]
From a Spiegel article about Adnan Oktar aka Harun Yahya, the creationist cult leader in Turkey whose libel lawsuit recently led to the blocking of the world renowned scientist Richard Dawkins’ website in Turkey (click for entire article):
“In 20 years,” [Yahya] says in serious tone, “humanity will enter a golden age.” Yahya says that he […]
The Education Ministry’s announcement about changes to school uniforms has caused debate among secular segments of society, who have found the new “tie-free” uniforms to be “not modern.”… Istanbul’s provincial director of national education, Ata Özer, announced that students could wear t-shirts instead of shirts and they did not have to wear ties until the […]
An excerpt from the article “Without God” by Steven Weinberg, in The New York Review of Books. Weinberg was awarded the Nobel Prize in physics. (click here for full article)
…A third source of tension between science and religious belief has been more important in Islam than in Christianity. Around 1100, the Sufi philosopher Abu Hamid […]
From The New Humanist:
Back in our May/June issue, Peter C Kjaergaard reported on the efforts of Adnan Oktar, AKA Harun Yahya, the shadowy Turkish creationist responsible for sending the lavish and absurd Atlas of Creation to science professors and teachers around the world.
He’s also well-known for going through the Turkish courts in order to have […]
(from an article by Taner Edis): The December 1992 issue of “Acts and Facts” (of the ICR [Institute for Creation Research]) describes a “Creation Conference” in the October of that year in Turkey, featuring Duane Gish and John Morris, explaining how
Sometime in the mid 1980s, the Turkish Minister of […]