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Uit: New Scientist, 10-04-2009, door Debora MacKenzie The battle for Turkey's soul Turkey is the Islamic world's leading secular democracy. It spends a large proportion of its income on scientific research and aims to match that of the European Union by 2013. Turks like science: one of the country's top-selling magazines is the popular science monthly Bilim ve Teknik ("Science and Technology"), published by the country's scientific funding agency TÜBITAK. The best-seller is a science monthly for kids. But Turkey is also a hotbed of creationism. So when a cover feature on Darwin planned for the March issue of Bilim ve Teknik was pulled at the last minute, it caused an uproar. Turkish scientists suspected that pressure from religious politicians had led to censorship. Is Turkey changing course? Does this bode ill for science in the Muslim world? Turkish scientists suspected that pressure from religious politicians led to censorship It depends. Seen in context, the incident could be a good sign, as the inevitable growing pains of a country adapting to a scientific world view. The key question is which way the process goes now. What happens in Turkey is important because its battles could be the first of many. First, the basics. In early February the editorial staff of Bilim ve Teknik decided to mark the 200th anniversary of Darwin's birth with a 15-page cover story on evolution. The issue went to the printer on Saturday 28 February. The following Monday, editor Çiğdem Atakuman received a phone call from TÜBITAK vice-president Ömer Cebeci. The presses were stopped. The issue finally came out a week late with the Darwin article gone and the cover featuring a story on global warming. So what happened? It depends on who you ask. Cebeci maintains that he did not order Atakuman to remove the piece. He insists there was no censorship, only that the dropped article had been "prepared hastily without regard to institutional procedures". TÜBITAK says the magazine will carry a Darwin special later this year. Atakuman sees it differently. She issued a public statement saying that the pages were planned as normal and that Cebeci had ordered her to cancel the piece as it was deemed inappropriate for the "sensitive environment" of Turkey. Whether the cancellation was an administrative glitch, censorship, or just an attempt to sidestep controversy, the row is highly revealing. Evolution is a lightning-rod issue in Turkey. Every leading newspaper reported the story. The Turkish Academy of Sciences called for an investigation and for Cebeci to resign (neither seems likely, although another senior TÜBITAK official resigned in protest). ... Red.: Het verschil met het ook behoorlijk achterlijke Amerika is dat de christenen daar ook wel een grote mond hebben, maar zich niet met anderen mogen bemoeien - er is geen enkele poging geweest om een Darwin-publicatie te onderdrukken - wel heeft men eigen literatuur verspreid. De situaties zijn dus principieel hetzelfde, maar qua ernst onvergelijkbaar. Samen te vatten als: alle geloof deugt niet, maar de islam deugt veruit het minst. Naar Cultuur, integratie, islam  ,
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