As fires threaten the ancient site of the ancient olympic stadium and its museums the government is casting aspersions that the fires were the result of 'political extremists'. Without specifying WHAT he means by this theories regarding the 'culprits' of the fires are spreading like the fires themselves. The latest is that a new American Laser is causing these fires.
Thank God for America, if it wasn't for them, we might have to look for the real culprits.
Sunday, August 26, 2007
Going to Armenia
Today, my wife and I made a decision: we will spend our first Bayram of this year in Armenia.
We are looking forward to meet Myrthe and do some sightseeing as well.
As my wife is Turkish, she really wants to talk about what happened in Anatolia between 1890-1923.
As a foreign Turkish student in the USA, she often was harassed by Armenian people only because she was Turkish. In my opinion we call this: racism.
But she and I are looking forward to talk with other human beings, in Armenia.
My only concern is a visa: I, as a Dutch, can go there without any problems, but it looks like that Turks need a visa.
Anyway, we made our decision, so we will go.
We are looking forward to meet Myrthe and do some sightseeing as well.
As my wife is Turkish, she really wants to talk about what happened in Anatolia between 1890-1923.
As a foreign Turkish student in the USA, she often was harassed by Armenian people only because she was Turkish. In my opinion we call this: racism.
But she and I are looking forward to talk with other human beings, in Armenia.
My only concern is a visa: I, as a Dutch, can go there without any problems, but it looks like that Turks need a visa.
Anyway, we made our decision, so we will go.
Islamic Fundamentalism
The Taliban, 2007
A conference about women and Islam, London 2007.
Children trained for the Unholy war.
Below a posting of me....a year ago.
Islamic fundamentalism
In the Dark fundamentalist scheme the world constantly decays and has constantly to be re-created. The only function of the intellect is to assist that re-creation.
It reinterprets the texts; it re-establishes the divine precedent.So history has to serve theology, law is separated from the idea of equity, and teaching is separated from learning.
This doctrine has its attractions; To a student from the University of Karachi, from perhaps a provincial or peasant background, the old faith comes more easily and is more simple to swallow than any new-fangled academic discipline.
Fundamentalism these days takes root in the universities; and ironically 'deny education' can become the approved educated act for men against women.
How different this was in the days of Muslim glory; Islam opened itself to the learning of the world. Now fundamentalism provides an intellectual thermostat, set low. It equalizes, comforts, shelters, and preserves. Independent thinking can become a crime.
In this way the faith pervades everything, and it is possible to understand what the fundamentalists mean when they say that Islam is a 'complete way of life'; their Life!
But what is said about Islam is true, and perhaps truer, of other religions--like Hinduism or Buddhism or lesser tribal faiths--that at an early stage in their history were also complete cultures, self-contained and more or less isolated, with institutions, manners, and beliefs making a whole.
But the Islamic fundamentalist nowadays wish is to work back to such a whole, for them a God-given whole, but with the tool of faith alone--belief, religious practices and rituals!
It is like a wish--with intellect suppressed or limited, the historical sense falsified--to work back from the abstract to the concrete, and to set up the tribal walls again!
It is to seek to re-create something like a tribal ora city-state that--except in theological fantasy--never was.
The Koran is not the statute book of a settled golden age; it is the mystical or oracular record of an extended upheaval, widening out from the Prophet to his tribe in Arabia!!
Arabia was full of movement; Islam, with all its Jewish and Christian elements, was always mixed, eclectic, developing. ...The West, or the universal civilization it leads, is emotionally rejected. It undermines; it threatens. But at the same time it is needed, for its machines, goods, medicines, warplanes, the remittances from the emigrants, the hospitals that might have a cure for calcium deficiency, the universities that will provide master's degrees in mass media.
All the rejection of the West is contained within the assumption that there will always exist out there a living, creative civilization, oddly neutral, open to all to appeal to.
Rejection, therefore, is not absolute rejection. It is also, for the community as a whole, a way of ceasing to strive intellectually. It is to be parasitic; parasitism is one of the unacknowledged traits of Islamic fundamentalism.
Saturday, August 25, 2007
As Turkey is obsessed by a headscarf...
...Greece is burning.
France and the Netherlands sent this morning planes and helicopters to help extinguish the fires.
No 'official' statement made by the 'de missionair' Government of Turkey.
This picture is made by a British tourist in Athens. In the background the Acropolis. The picture above shows the fury which threatens NE Athens.
In the meanwhile, Prime Minister Kostas Karamanlis, claims that political extremists set the fires.
Friday, August 24, 2007
Adnan Oktar, Intelligent Design and Wordpress
Charismatic? Yes.
Lust for Money and Power? Yes.
Adnan Oktar, the Turkish cult leader, thinks that he knows what Intelligent Design means, or 'Creationism'.
Through the ages many of these cult leaders appeared and disappeared, over and over again. You can recognize these fake 'prophets' by 3 things:
'Their Lust for sex';
'Their Lust for Money';
and 'Their Lust for Power'.
Always they turned out to be fake. Go to the Southern Belt of the USA, the Amazon in Brazil, Haiti, Philippines and so on.
Besides this, they always change history according to their own interpretations and are using religions for their benefits. In this case Adnan Oktar is using Islam in his fight with all kinds of religions: and with a little knowledge he explains the whole world.
For him and his followers, Intelligent Design (ID) is something new...but it is as old as Rome. Only it had a different name...as the Greeks already made a link between the Universe and Mankind...
Following these cults for 30 years, I am astonished how many of them can freely operate in countries like the USA, Brazil, and in Turkey. But more astonishing is how they can influence the legal systems. See how wordpress was shut down.
First of all: ID is dealing with 'conscience science', introduced a long, long time ago.
Adnan Oktar and his followers need first some lessons in philology.
Regarding the law ban on wordpress: it's only the defendant who can do something.
Regarding A.O. and anti-Semitism; there is the ECHR ...
A.O. acts in a grey area of the law...but I would like to face him in a live debate!
New writer on this blog
As I wrote in my post of beginning of August, Vassilios, an Australian / Greek, living now in Athens will contribute regularly to this blog like Yasemin, our Turkish writer in Florence.
Today his first excellent posting here! See the post below this one.
Today his first excellent posting here! See the post below this one.
Blogs - to be feared or abused
While access to wordpress sites have been banned in Turkey, across the Hellespont in Greece, blogs are increasingly being seen as a political tool by the major parties. Numerous leaks to the media have revealed that political parties will use blogs to circumvent laws banning the publishing of Opinion Polls two weeks prior to election day, and this way publish polls showing how 'popular' they are and thereby influence public opinion. Since blogs are based... well where ARE they based, wherever its servers are, they can publish outside local restrictions and anonymously.
If this subversive co-opting of blogs does go ahead this will drastically change the perception of blogs. No longer will they be seen as individual expressions of thought but rather people will have to judge them more critically, the same way the other media is scrutinised. It may also turn people off blogs altogether.
It does illustrate a difference in attitudes in the two different countries. Turkey is following old school methods by restricting access to them, a method which ultimately draws more attention to them and raises their importance to the public and people will always find ways around restrictions making it a futile gesture.
Whereas Greece's co-option brings blogs to the same level as government propoganda, disenchants the public and ultimately turns people away.
The question then is, which is worse?
If this subversive co-opting of blogs does go ahead this will drastically change the perception of blogs. No longer will they be seen as individual expressions of thought but rather people will have to judge them more critically, the same way the other media is scrutinised. It may also turn people off blogs altogether.
It does illustrate a difference in attitudes in the two different countries. Turkey is following old school methods by restricting access to them, a method which ultimately draws more attention to them and raises their importance to the public and people will always find ways around restrictions making it a futile gesture.
Whereas Greece's co-option brings blogs to the same level as government propoganda, disenchants the public and ultimately turns people away.
The question then is, which is worse?
Thursday, August 23, 2007
Toastmaster? What the heck is this..
Today, I found in my inbox an invitation to join Toastmasters online. Since I have never heard about the word, the meaning of 'toastmaster', I checked some sites.
Basically, it's all about arts of speaking, listening, and thinking--vital skills that promote self-actualization, enhance leadership potential, foster human understanding, and contribute to the general betterment of humankind. And it's all about "learning-by-doing". This sounds good or not?! But I know a club of 550 here in Turkey to whom I pass this invitation....
An example
Jimiyu, (left) the newest member of Australia's Taronga Zoo giraffe family, makes friends in Sydney after being transported from Western Plains Zoo in New South Wales.
Source: BBC
Wednesday, August 22, 2007
Erkan in action to find out the truth...
As long as the sage continues (looks like nobody in this country knows what really is going on) several people are trying to find out what is going on. And why the ban on wordpress is still there.
One of them is Erkan. Here some points.
Looks like a lot of people are still suffering with no access...
One of them is Erkan. Here some points.
Looks like a lot of people are still suffering with no access...
Tuesday, August 21, 2007
Anti-Americanism
There are so many people writing around, full of anger, full of hate, with one goal: create a hysteria about the USA. Anti-Americanism flourishes on Turkish soil. I will write in detail why and how.
Is there a law that protects 'Americanism'?
Is there a law that protects 'Americanism'?
More about Wordpress
Why Wordpress.com was banned in Turkey- reason unveiled
Aug 20th, 2007 by turkishdigestEdit
As many of you may have heard, last Friday the 17th, it was revealed that access to all Wordpress.com sites from Turkey was banned. When I first heard about it, I asked my friends to check my own website We are the Turks hosted by Wordpress, to determine whether this was true. They told me the following was coming up on the screen:
"Access to this site has been suspended in accordance with decision no: 2007/195 of T.C. Fatih 2.Civil Court of First Instance"
I did some research and did not find much over the weekend regarding the reason, but finally this morning the mystery curtain was lifted.
Matt Mullenweg, the founding developer of WordPress made this announcement, where he's asking the opinion of Wordpress community as to what they think should be done?
Apparently this is what happened: the attorneys of the cult leader Adnan Oktar aka Harun Yahya, a 51 year old former interior design student known in Turkey as "Adnan Hoca", who founded in 1990 the foundation known as BAV (Bilim Arastirma Vakfi-Scientific Research Foundation), had applied to Wordpress for removal of what they described as "unlawful statements regarding their client". "As most of our attempts were unanswered" alleged the attorneys, they applied to Turkish judicial courts "to stop the defamation executed through Wordpress services". Hence, by the decision of Fatih 2nd Civil Court of First Instance, number 2007/195, access to Wordpress.com was then blocked in Turkey by TTNET, an Internet network that covers all Turkey.
We learned that the sites which Adnan Oktar's attorneys wanted removed are run by an Islamic Reformer Edip Yuksel, who wrote an article criticizing Oktar and his movement where he seems to be trying to expose Oktar and his followers as a fundamentalist movement with dark secrets. Edip Yuksel published this message of rebuttal.
Started as a religious cult that preyed on wealthy members of Turkish society, the BAV has appeared in lurid media tales about sex rings, a blackmail prosecution and speculation about its charismatic leader. But if BAV's notoriety has been burnished by a sensationalist Turkish media, the secretive group has earned its reputation as a prodigious publisher of inexpensive ideological paperbacks. BAV has put out hundreds of titles written by "Harun Yahya" (a pseudonym) on various topics, but most of them are Islamic-based attacks on the theory of evolution. His book, Atlas Of Creation, decrying evolution is now aggressively promoted well beyond the borders of Turkey to the Middle East, Europe, and even the United States. The book is turning up, unsolicited, in the mailboxes of scientists and members of the US Congress, and at science museums around USA. In France, the Harun Yahya book offensive led the government to issue a warning for schools to be on the look out for the "Atlas" before it makes it into their classrooms. Meanwhile, the increasing European activity of BAV, as well as of Christian creationist groups, recently prompted a committee of the Council of Europe – a 47-nation group that acts as a kind of continental watchdog – to issue a report strongly warning about its dangers to education.
The lavishly illustrated 800-page book is one of the most significant creationist challenge to Charles Darwin's theory, which Yahya calls a feeble and perverted ideology contradicted by the Koran. The books are slick, but BAV has had plenty of help. Creationism in Turkey got key support in the 1980s and 1990s from American creationist organizations, and BAV's Yahya books resemble the same sorts of works put out by California's Institute for Creation Research. Except in Yahya's books, it's Allah that's doing the creating. Unlike fundamentalist Christian creationists, Oktar does not claim the earth was created only a few thousand years ago. Instead, he argues that fossils show that creatures from millions of years ago looked just like the creatures of today, thus disproving evolution. Also, Oktar's brand of creationism is not only religious, but political and even messianic, seeing most of the world's ills – terrorism and fascism among them – as stemming from Darwin's theory of evolution. In 2001, Science magazine called BAV "one of the world's strongest anti-evolution movements outside of North America".
Edezu'scomment to Matt's post, really sums the man and his works:
Greetings.
I'm writing from Turkey and thought that some info on this person may be helpful.
Adnan Oktar is a religious zealot who launched a campaign against the Darwinian theory of evolution, maybe a decade ago. He has written a number of books, which, despite being worthless and even funny by scientific standards, attracted the attention of religious people. In those fundamentalist circles, he is revered as the "destroyer" of evolutionary theory as the majority of islamists consider Darwinian evolution as a refuted theory thanks to his books.
As expected, his books and the ideas in them are worthless, mistaken, false, consisting of arguments refuted even by Darwin himself 140 years ago. Alas, he is a wealthy and powerful person, thus capable of reaching many people, by sending free copies of his huge books to every school, teacher, and university. Sadly, as the public he tries to reach is mostly uneducated, his words are taken to be the truth.
As a result of this, Turkish intellectuals and those of us lucky enough to get a secular education, with an understanding of what science is, and what an argument is, are giving his ideas what they deserve. He is respected in religious circles, but ridiculed in the Internet.
This person's current strategy is to block all the sites which attacks him and his ideas. A few months ago, he made a similar move and blocked "eksi sozluk", an open dictionary which is, in my opinion, a bastion of free speech in Turkish online media, with more than 10.000 writers and about 2.000 entries each day.
Adnan Oktar is taking advantage of the gaps in Turkish laws on the Internet, which are sadly on their infancy, to silence all the voices against him. Internet poses a real threat to people like him, where ideas are exposed, and people read them!
As a philosophy graduate who take active interest in evolution-creationism debate, and as a Turkish citizen with the ideal of freedom in the online world, I suggest NOT to cooperate with this person.
We will reach our blogs anyway
All similar fundamental movements are run by extremely wealthy men, which leads to
speculations as to the source of their wealth. Another such character is Fethullah Gulen, but we'll look into his activities in another post. Incidentally, all these Islamic fundamentalist movements gained importance after AKP came into power. More reason for secularists like myself to worry about the future of Turkey.
Aug 20th, 2007 by turkishdigestEdit
As many of you may have heard, last Friday the 17th, it was revealed that access to all Wordpress.com sites from Turkey was banned. When I first heard about it, I asked my friends to check my own website We are the Turks hosted by Wordpress, to determine whether this was true. They told me the following was coming up on the screen:
"Access to this site has been suspended in accordance with decision no: 2007/195 of T.C. Fatih 2.Civil Court of First Instance"
I did some research and did not find much over the weekend regarding the reason, but finally this morning the mystery curtain was lifted.
Matt Mullenweg, the founding developer of WordPress made this announcement, where he's asking the opinion of Wordpress community as to what they think should be done?
Apparently this is what happened: the attorneys of the cult leader Adnan Oktar aka Harun Yahya, a 51 year old former interior design student known in Turkey as "Adnan Hoca", who founded in 1990 the foundation known as BAV (Bilim Arastirma Vakfi-Scientific Research Foundation), had applied to Wordpress for removal of what they described as "unlawful statements regarding their client". "As most of our attempts were unanswered" alleged the attorneys, they applied to Turkish judicial courts "to stop the defamation executed through Wordpress services". Hence, by the decision of Fatih 2nd Civil Court of First Instance, number 2007/195, access to Wordpress.com was then blocked in Turkey by TTNET, an Internet network that covers all Turkey.
We learned that the sites which Adnan Oktar's attorneys wanted removed are run by an Islamic Reformer Edip Yuksel, who wrote an article criticizing Oktar and his movement where he seems to be trying to expose Oktar and his followers as a fundamentalist movement with dark secrets. Edip Yuksel published this message of rebuttal.
Started as a religious cult that preyed on wealthy members of Turkish society, the BAV has appeared in lurid media tales about sex rings, a blackmail prosecution and speculation about its charismatic leader. But if BAV's notoriety has been burnished by a sensationalist Turkish media, the secretive group has earned its reputation as a prodigious publisher of inexpensive ideological paperbacks. BAV has put out hundreds of titles written by "Harun Yahya" (a pseudonym) on various topics, but most of them are Islamic-based attacks on the theory of evolution. His book, Atlas Of Creation, decrying evolution is now aggressively promoted well beyond the borders of Turkey to the Middle East, Europe, and even the United States. The book is turning up, unsolicited, in the mailboxes of scientists and members of the US Congress, and at science museums around USA. In France, the Harun Yahya book offensive led the government to issue a warning for schools to be on the look out for the "Atlas" before it makes it into their classrooms. Meanwhile, the increasing European activity of BAV, as well as of Christian creationist groups, recently prompted a committee of the Council of Europe – a 47-nation group that acts as a kind of continental watchdog – to issue a report strongly warning about its dangers to education.
The lavishly illustrated 800-page book is one of the most significant creationist challenge to Charles Darwin's theory, which Yahya calls a feeble and perverted ideology contradicted by the Koran. The books are slick, but BAV has had plenty of help. Creationism in Turkey got key support in the 1980s and 1990s from American creationist organizations, and BAV's Yahya books resemble the same sorts of works put out by California's Institute for Creation Research. Except in Yahya's books, it's Allah that's doing the creating. Unlike fundamentalist Christian creationists, Oktar does not claim the earth was created only a few thousand years ago. Instead, he argues that fossils show that creatures from millions of years ago looked just like the creatures of today, thus disproving evolution. Also, Oktar's brand of creationism is not only religious, but political and even messianic, seeing most of the world's ills – terrorism and fascism among them – as stemming from Darwin's theory of evolution. In 2001, Science magazine called BAV "one of the world's strongest anti-evolution movements outside of North America".
Edezu'scomment to Matt's post, really sums the man and his works:
Greetings.
I'm writing from Turkey and thought that some info on this person may be helpful.
Adnan Oktar is a religious zealot who launched a campaign against the Darwinian theory of evolution, maybe a decade ago. He has written a number of books, which, despite being worthless and even funny by scientific standards, attracted the attention of religious people. In those fundamentalist circles, he is revered as the "destroyer" of evolutionary theory as the majority of islamists consider Darwinian evolution as a refuted theory thanks to his books.
As expected, his books and the ideas in them are worthless, mistaken, false, consisting of arguments refuted even by Darwin himself 140 years ago. Alas, he is a wealthy and powerful person, thus capable of reaching many people, by sending free copies of his huge books to every school, teacher, and university. Sadly, as the public he tries to reach is mostly uneducated, his words are taken to be the truth.
As a result of this, Turkish intellectuals and those of us lucky enough to get a secular education, with an understanding of what science is, and what an argument is, are giving his ideas what they deserve. He is respected in religious circles, but ridiculed in the Internet.
This person's current strategy is to block all the sites which attacks him and his ideas. A few months ago, he made a similar move and blocked "eksi sozluk", an open dictionary which is, in my opinion, a bastion of free speech in Turkish online media, with more than 10.000 writers and about 2.000 entries each day.
Adnan Oktar is taking advantage of the gaps in Turkish laws on the Internet, which are sadly on their infancy, to silence all the voices against him. Internet poses a real threat to people like him, where ideas are exposed, and people read them!
As a philosophy graduate who take active interest in evolution-creationism debate, and as a Turkish citizen with the ideal of freedom in the online world, I suggest NOT to cooperate with this person.
We will reach our blogs anyway
All similar fundamental movements are run by extremely wealthy men, which leads to
speculations as to the source of their wealth. Another such character is Fethullah Gulen, but we'll look into his activities in another post. Incidentally, all these Islamic fundamentalist movements gained importance after AKP came into power. More reason for secularists like myself to worry about the future of Turkey.
Turkey bans Wordpress blogs
Turkish Internet users have been blocked from accessing sites on the Wordpress.com hosting service after a court in Istanbul ordered the site be blocked after lawyers complained that a number of blogs hosted by Wordpress were libellous of Islamic creationist author Adnan Oktar.
Here more.
Here more.
Monday, August 20, 2007
Teach your Children well...
Sunday, August the 19th, late at night:
I had an interesting conversation with a German acquaintance of mine. He is in love with the most beautiful girl in the world, according to him, and she is the most lovely person he has ever met. And she is Turkish.
Lots of comments at home in Germany. From his family, his friends, and schoolmates. But he follows his intuition and his feelings and is still planning to marry her.
I congratulated him since I am married with a Turkish woman as well.
Suddenly he asked me how Life in Turkey would be for him, as a German. I told him as a Dutch: 'Es ist bis zu Ihnen', up to you! This is German language btw, but I am Dutch..
Suddenly, he threw a question on the table, which was so striking:
'Hans, you are from the Netherlands, you can help me...'
My friend continued: 'When I was in xxxx, I asked my love, "why is the military so powerful in Turkey?", and she replied to me: "Because the Greeks wants to invade us". "We have to be strong against the imperialists".'
Take a breath...
Yes, I know that down here in Turkey, children at the age of 6 are taught about the 'internal and external enemies'...Only, is this the way how you raise up your kids?
I had an interesting conversation with a German acquaintance of mine. He is in love with the most beautiful girl in the world, according to him, and she is the most lovely person he has ever met. And she is Turkish.
Lots of comments at home in Germany. From his family, his friends, and schoolmates. But he follows his intuition and his feelings and is still planning to marry her.
I congratulated him since I am married with a Turkish woman as well.
Suddenly he asked me how Life in Turkey would be for him, as a German. I told him as a Dutch: 'Es ist bis zu Ihnen', up to you! This is German language btw, but I am Dutch..
Suddenly, he threw a question on the table, which was so striking:
'Hans, you are from the Netherlands, you can help me...'
My friend continued: 'When I was in xxxx, I asked my love, "why is the military so powerful in Turkey?", and she replied to me: "Because the Greeks wants to invade us". "We have to be strong against the imperialists".'
Take a breath...
Yes, I know that down here in Turkey, children at the age of 6 are taught about the 'internal and external enemies'...Only, is this the way how you raise up your kids?
Sunday, August 19, 2007
The court order, ban, fatwa, whatever
What I simply don't understand is why nobody knows why this court decision is made. Looks fair to me that when a court makes a decision, it issues also a statement why the decision is made...or am I wrong? Now leaving so many people in limbo, it also creates space for speculations, conspiracy theories and gossip. I think that after 5 years, I still have a lot to learn about how Turkey is ruled, but this court issued rather a fatwa than a decision...
The latest news about the fatwa...on wordpress
Below a message of a person who claims that everything is alright...
His claim is false. His claim is put on the blog of Matt of wordpress.
There are a lot of smart ICT people out there in Turkey, but with this kind of fake advice, they are burning themselves up. ... wordpress is not available in Turkey at the moment.
This is a bad joke.
Hi,
As we have stated here in Turkish:
http://www.fazlamesai.net/?a=article&cmode=nested&sid=4674#30986
the issue is about some government officer (military related) spreading some information. This critical situation led to a fast court order and the district attorney issued a written order to TTNet, the main Internet and ADSL service provider of Turkey. They had to obey this legal order but some inexperienced technical employee blocked the whole wordpress.com domain in the DNS servers which led to this mess. In a few minutes a technical middle manager realized the situation and took required action. Within a few hours the wordpress.com domain was available (except the problematic blog which is still being blocked due to legal orders). The inexperienced employee is about to leave the job.
This is the situation now, provided FYI.
His claim is false. His claim is put on the blog of Matt of wordpress.
There are a lot of smart ICT people out there in Turkey, but with this kind of fake advice, they are burning themselves up. ... wordpress is not available in Turkey at the moment.
This is a bad joke.
Hi,
As we have stated here in Turkish:
http://www.fazlamesai.net/?a=article&cmode=nested&sid=4674#30986
the issue is about some government officer (military related) spreading some information. This critical situation led to a fast court order and the district attorney issued a written order to TTNet, the main Internet and ADSL service provider of Turkey. They had to obey this legal order but some inexperienced technical employee blocked the whole wordpress.com domain in the DNS servers which led to this mess. In a few minutes a technical middle manager realized the situation and took required action. Within a few hours the wordpress.com domain was available (except the problematic blog which is still being blocked due to legal orders). The inexperienced employee is about to leave the job.
This is the situation now, provided FYI.
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