Science censorship row in Turkey
Maxine Clarke
Wednesday, 18 March 2009 18:08 UTC
The biggest crisis in Turkish academia since last year’s lifting of the headscarf ban in universities happened last week, when a portrait of Charles Darwin was taken off the cover of the March issue of the government-backed science magazine Bilim ve Teknik (Science and Technology) just before it went to press. TÜBTAK, Turkey’s national science funding agency, which publishes the magazine, then sacked its editor, Çidem Atakuman. Scientists, assuming censorship, are justifiably outraged and protests are ongoing. Science minister Mehmet Aydn, a historian of philosophy and religion, expressed discomfort at the cover’s removal — but also fanned the flames by commenting: “What kind of a fight can we have with Darwin? The guy is already dead.” According to an Editorial in the 19 March issue of Nature (458, 259; 2009, free to access online), this row has brought into focus two issues that plague Turkish science: political interference in the scientific civil service; and high levels of public support for creationism. This row over a censored magazine and a sacked editor could put the good work that Turkey has done for science at risk. The Editorial concludes that Turkey’s ruling party must keep religion out of science policy, and be seen to be doing so. We welcome your views. Contributions to this Nature Network discussion will be considered for the Correspondence page of Nature.
-
Replies
Jump to resultsResults
-
Turkey, unfortunately, has become the headquarter of Islamic Creationism led by some charlatan named Harun Yahya. Most of their material is cut and pasted from the discovery institute. Turkey is practically the only Islamic country where liberal resistance to such fundamentalism is still possible and it is sad to see this bastion under attack (of course, that is also why the attack has been launched in Turkey; its not even needed in most other countries).
In the rest of the Islamic world, literalist interpretations of Islam (including its creation myths) already enjoy mainstream status. In the presence of blasphemy laws and apostasy laws (both blasphemy and apostasy are punishable by death in mainstream Islamic tradition) attempts to reinterpret these creation myths are difficult, so the outlook for evolutionary teaching in the general public is poor. On the other hand, it is possible that some kind of “dont ask dont tell” policy will allow evolution to continue to be taught in higher biology courses as long public debate is limited. -
Harun Yahya (a.k.a. Adnan Oktar), the crackpot Turkish creationist, somehow enjoys tremendous clout in Turkey and has access to unlimited funds.
Evidence of his money became clear some time in 2007 when he sent, unsolicited, to professors in Biology departments of many universities and libraries across the US and Europe, a book called Atlas of Creation; the book, a rather large tome of 800 pages, was quite stunning in appearance, and very colorfully illustrated, but nevertheless contained the same old, vapid, absurd, and unscientific arguments in favor of creationism. Biologists, unimpressed by the arguments, admired the book’s design and aesthetics (and the unimaginable expense possibly incurred in producing and distributing it), and then promptly forgot about it. Scrutiny by a few interested science-bloggers later revealed that many of the images in the book as well as in websites maintained by Harun Yahya were lifted without attribution (and often erroneously) from other sources.
But his political clout in Turkey is more impressive (in a perverse sort of way). Enraged by what progressive bloggers wrote about him in Turkey, he managed to get the courts to shut down Wordpress blogs, effectively censoring about a million blogs in late 2007, and ban YouTube and Google groups in early 2008.
Reports Hurriyet News, an English language Turkish website: The influence of conservative political leaders in Turkey, including the current Justice and Development Party, or AKP, government, in discrediting of the theory of evolution cannot be underestimated, academics said… “Creationism entered biology textbooks in high schools in 1985, after a cooperation between the creationist movement in the U.S. and the Turkish Education Ministry,” said Aykut Kence, a professor of biology at Ankara’s Middle East Technical University, or METU. “Turkey is the only secular state in the world that has creationism in its science textbooks.”
The National Center for Science Education has an excellent and well-researched report on creationism in Turkey. Quoting from the report, “BAV is a radical fundamentalist foundation established in 1991 by Adnan Oktar… BAV has a long history of contact with American creationists, including receiving assistance from ICR” (the Texas-based Institute of Creation Research, emphasis mine)… (Important ICR folks) visited Turkey in 1992, just after the establishment of BAV, and participated in a creationist conference in Istanbul… became well acquainted with Turkish fundamentalists and Islamic sects during… numerous trips to Turkey in search of Noah’s Ark… BAV’s creationist conferences in April and June 1998 in Istanbul and Ankara, which included many US creationists, developed after Harun Yahya started to publish his anti-evolution books."
Given the entrenched nature of anti-science beliefs in Turkey, the question that comes to mind is if the international scientific community help end the Science censorship there, and how.
-
Biologists, unimpressed by the arguments, admired the book’s design and aesthetics (and the unimaginable expense possibly incurred in producing and distributing it), and then promptly forgot about it.
Quite right – the first I had heard of Adnan Oktar, was during our SciBlog 2008 behind-the-scenes tour of the library at the fabulous Linnean Society of London, thanks to Matt Brown. I had precisely that reaction to the tome.
I wanted to answer this, to ask: what on earth can one do to further the study of science in Turkey or elsewhere, as part of the international scientific community? The NYT wrote that Mr. Yahya’s ideas “cast evolution as part of the corrupting influence of the West on Islamic culture, and that promotes a profound anti-science attitude that is certainly not going to help the Islamic world catch up to the West.” Aside from the rather insulting turn of phrase “catch up to the West”, in which we have plenty of anti-science people as well, what else can be done, besides give moral support and a welcome for a sabbatical or training to our colleagues?
-
On the question of “what can be done”? It may be worth noting that Western colonial intervention has not been very successful in doing anything about any of this in the past. Turkey has a liberal, relatively modern sector because of Ataturk and the nationalist Turkish officers, who were NOT the favored party of any Western power but a reaction to defeat at the hands of Western powers. I am not saying things will get better if Western intervention ceases. In most Muslim countries, they will probably get worse (at least initially). But I do have a suspicion that ham-handed intervention on the side of various military dictators has not helped the modern liberal cause, it has damaged it and given more oxygen to medievalists who can pose as enemies of colonialism. Again, I am not sure what a more enlightened policy would look like, I just wanted to point out that “doing something” can sometimes be worse than doing nothing.
-
Certainly. Doing something would have to be grassroots from within a scientific community that doesn’t appear or act paternalistic. But for instance, honoring and recognizing individual researchers from Turkey (or from other countries in similar situations) can help a little. But is that really enough? and are there any other ideas?
-
That is really an excellent idea. Honoring the few Turkish scientists that are standing up against this insanity is bound to focus global attention to the pitiful state that Turkish Science Education finds itself now. If the common Turkish citizens begin to take pride in their rational-minded scientists, perhaps one day the influence of the idiotic creationists will wane.
-
We have read with surprise the editorial entitled “Turkey censors evolution” Nature 458, 259: 2009). As a group of scientists from Turkey, we do not consider the changes of cover of Turkish science magazine Bilim ve Teknik Science and Technology) censor of science. Also, we consider there is an erroneous aspect of editorial board, that Turkey suppresses the scientists or scientific notion. We have two objections to this editorial.
At first, it is not the main point that an article about evolution was censored in a state supported periodical, but there is a need for a global discussion about government-science-censor triangle, which is known to spin in a hottest mode in US. As far as we understand, the problem was related to TUBITAK’s (Turkish Scientific and Technical Research Council) internal affairs, but not censorship as was reflected in your editorial. However, if this theory had been censored for the high school curriculum, which could easily be done by The Turkish Ministry of Education, we would be the strongest protestors against such intention, though we are not fond of it. Actually, the article of issue had been replaced by an article about The Global Warming and Climate Change Science Program which was censored by Bush administration in United States. Associate Senior Rick Piltz’s resignation caused severe reactions in American Science world against White House. In early 2006, one of the nation’s leading climatologists, James Hansen of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s Goddard Institute, announced his efforts to speak publicly about global warming were being thwarted by administrators at NASA.
At second, still today Darwinian theory is being discussed everywhere, and considered as indisputable. It is, indeed, a fact that Darwinian theory is not science but just logical, neither proven scientifically nor rejected yet. Nonetheless, American Gallup poll addresses that only 10% of general population and 55% of scientists in US have a view of naturalistic evolution (1,2). There are, of course, countless nuanced opinions that fall somewhere in between.
Once and for all, Turkish scientists are passionately against censorship; however scientific laws and theories must be expressed in separate ways.Dr Ahmet Karadag
Dr. Hilmi Demirin
Prof. Dr. Sinasi Ozsoylu
Ankara, Turkey -
Am I seeing things and reading too much into nothing, or did the Turkish scientists in the above post just express adherence to the oft-used creationist/ intelligent-design-proponent gambit that “Darwin’s Theory of Evolution is just a theory”?
I quote: “…It is, indeed, a fact that Darwinian theory is not science but just logical, neither proven scientifically nor rejected yet…” Huh?
The idea of evolution of life on Earth was vogue in Europe in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century. Summarizing the existing evidence in favor of the idea of the descent of all organisms through modifications from a common ancestor (Common Descent), Charles Darwin built a strong case for evolution, and in 1859, in his book “On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection”, supplied a mechanism – namely, natural selection – that could explain how evolution occurs.
Biologists no longer question whether evolution has occurred or is occurring, because the process has been empirically demonstrated so overwhelmingly (of course, despite the evidence of its factual basis, creationists/ID proponents like to harp on the word ‘theory’ in Darwin’s theory).
Current debates on evolution among biologists rather focus on the exact mechanism of evolution. The introduction – in the early twentieth century – of genetics and population biology into studies of the evolutionary process led to the recognition of mutations, random variations and the resultant alterations in gene frequencies within a population, as important forces that govern natural selection.
[grumble] Darwinian theory is not science, indeed!! In which bizarro world?[/grumble]
Several other mechanisms (which, of course, Darwin had no idea of) have been proposed now in addition to natural selection, such as random genetic drift (considered almost as important as natural selection), allelic variations of the same gene within a population, and gradual accumulation of small genetic changes (that eventually results in species differences or designation of higher taxonomic levels). Whereas Darwin’s theory of natural selection was concerned with individual organisms and speciation, current scientific thinking – aided by technological advances – offers additional explanations of how evolution works at the level of genes, phenotypes, and populations.
-
Given the importance of genomics in medicine today, it was rather worrying when the UCL Medical School Islamic Society arranged a creationist meeting on 26th February 2008. Posters appeared everywhere proclaiming “Collapse of the Evolution Theory. Forget whatever it is that you think you know. An enlightening lecture by Dr Oktar Babuna and Ali Sadun of the Harun Yahya organisation”. The poster went on to make great play of the fact that they’d booked the Darwin Theatre for the event. “In the very building dedicated to Charles Darwin on the spot where he once lived. 150 years to the month that he came up with his theorem [sic] and 199 years after his birth”.
The Wikipedia entry for Adrian Oktar, founder of Harun Yahya, makes interesting reading. He is certainly a rather curious hero for students.
After representations were made, the meeting went ahead, but the Provost of UCL decided that the meeting should be held in the Gustave Tuck Theatre. This very beautiful lecture theatre was built from the proceeds of a donation in the 1920s by the then President of the Jewish Historical Society,
-
Ha-ha, David, it seems your provost has a sense of humor… ;) You underestimate him :)
Results
-
