Michael Rubin | @mrubin1971 01.16.2013 – 8:00 AM<\/p>\n
Far from being a model \u201cMuslim democracy,\u201d Turkey has grown progressively more illiberal under Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdo\u011fan\u2019s Islamist government. A bit over a year ago, the Turkish government blocked a website discussing Darwin in an Internet children\u2019s filter. At the time, the head of Turkey\u2019s Scientific and Technological Research Council downplayed the incident, telling H\u00fcrriyet that the ban was not against the theory of evolution. \u201cIf that was the case,\u201d he said, \u201cevery website that used to word would have been banned. This one may have been banned for containing harmful material to children.\u201d<\/p>\n
Evidently, his downplaying of the incident was just nonsense for the gullible masses. Now, the Council is banning books which discuss Darwin. According to H\u00fcrriyet Daily News:<\/p>\n
The evolutionist books, previously available through T\u00dcB\u0130TAK\u2019s Popular Science Publications\u2019 List, will no longer be provided by the council. The books have long been listed as \u201cout of stock\u201d on T\u00dcB\u0130TAK\u2019s website, but their further publication is now slated to be stopped permanently. Titles by Richard Dawkins, Alan Moorehead, Stephen Jay Gould, Richard Levontin and James Watson are all included in the list of books that will no longer be available to Turkish readers.<\/p>\n
When Erdo\u011fan, in a fit of pique, declared that his goal was \u201cto raise a religious generation,\u201d many Western diplomats pooh-poohed the incident as just one more example of Erdo\u011fan\u2019s rhetorical excess. Given Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi\u2019s recently unearthed anti-Semitic diatribe declaring Jews to be descended from \u201capes and pigs,\u201d perhaps it\u2019s time not only to recognize that the Islamists might not only benefit from a little time studying Darwin, but also that it\u2019s time that diplomats understand that what Islamists say to their own population is far more important than what they tell Western diplomats and agenda-driven journalists.<\/p>\n
via What Turkey\u2019s Ban on Darwin Means \u00ab Commentary Magazine.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Michael Rubin | @mrubin1971 01.16.2013 – 8:00 AM Far from being a model \u201cMuslim democracy,\u201d Turkey has grown progressively more illiberal under Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdo\u011fan\u2019s Islamist government. A bit over a year ago, the Turkish government blocked a website discussing Darwin in an Internet children\u2019s filter. At the time, the head of Turkey\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":83,"featured_media":672692,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[845],"tags":[1223,1212,8685],"class_list":["post-63165","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-scitech","tag-censorship","tag-darwin","tag-islamism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63165","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/83"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=63165"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63165\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/672692"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=63165"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=63165"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=63165"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}