Thursday, May 05, 2005

Evolution debate is over in Turkey

"Kansas taxpayers are footing the bill to bring the Istanbul resident to Topeka as one of 23 witnesses scheduled to testify this week before a subcommittee of the Kansas State School Board in its unorthodox "trial" over science teaching standards. (Fortunately, Akyol happens to be in Washington, D.C., on other business, so Kansans are paying only to bring him across the country, not all the way from Turkey.)

Born in 1972, Akyol has a master's degree in history and writes a column for a newspaper in Istanbul. He also has identified himself as a spokesman for the murky Bilim Arastirma Vakfi, a group with an innocuous-sounding name -- it means "Science Research Foundation" -- but a nasty reputation."

"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. They're afraid they'll be attacked by the radical Islamists and the BAV."

"It's hopeless here," Sayin says. "I've been fighting with these guys for six years, and it's come to nothing." As a result of the BAV campaign and other efforts to denounce evolution, he adds, most members of Turkey's parliament today not only discount evolution but consider it a hoax. "Now creationism is in [high school] biology books," Sayin says. "Evolution is presented [by BAV] as a conspiracy of the Jewish and American imperialists to promote new world order and fascist motives ... and the majority of the people believe it."
pitch.com | Your OFFICIAL program to the Scopes II Kansas Monkey Trial | 2005-05-05

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