Adnan Oqtar: Turkish religious philosopher or TV star

A picture of half-naked women dancing in front of television cameras to please Adnan Oqtar, a Turkish Muslim cleric, was published around the world when he was sentenced to more than 1,000 years in prison.

A Turkish court has sentenced Adnan Oqtar to more than a thousand years in prison for sexual, financial and political crimes.

Adnan, 64, was arrested by Istanbul police in 2018 along with more than 200 other suspects in connection with financial crimes. Later, he was charged with rape of women, sexual abuse of children, fraud and espionage.

But where did the story of Adnan Oqtar begin?

Ankara-born Adnan Oqtar, also known as Harun Yahya, graduated from Mimarsan Art University in Istanbul with a degree in Political Islam.

During the tumultuous years of the 1980s in Turkey, when his intellectual foundations were formed, he went beyond opposing Marxist and materialist ideologies to opposing modern ideas in the natural sciences.

As a secular Muslim-majority country, Turkey still does not accept ideas like ‘evolution’. In the Turkish education system, Darwin’s ideas still have no place in the curriculum of the Arab world.

Adnan Oqtar believed that Darwin’s theories were wrong.

His name became famous after he gathered students in the mosque to hold a religious-political rally. During these years he also published a book called Judaism and Freemasonry.

In this book, Oqtar argues that ‘Jews and Freemasons have infiltrated government institutions in Turkey, with the aim of destroying the spiritual, religious and moral values ​​of the Turkish people and turning them into animals.’

With these clear words and harsh comments, young Adnan and the police are not far off.

He was tried for promoting a ‘religious revolution’ and eventually spent 10 of his 19 months in prison in a mental institution. Where according to the doctor he was diagnosed with ‘mania and schizophrenia’. At the age of 31, he started going to doctors for a mental health check-up.

Adnan founded the Science Research Foundation (BAV) in 1990 to promote his ideas, which included rejecting Darwin’s theories and emphasizing ‘creationism’.

His political problems continued more or less in the late nineties and the beginning of the new century AD. After the rise to power of the Islamic Welfare Party and then the AKP, he gained more freedom, but was eventually sentenced to 1,000 years in prison by the same government.

He was arrested again in 1999. This time he was charged with using power for personal gain, but the charge was dropped two years later after a legal dispute.

Adnan narrowed his ideological distance from the ruling party and at the same time tried to win the hearts of Atatürk’s supporters, the perfectionists. He also established good relations with the Turkish nationalists.

He also changed his international strategy, reducing ‘anti-Semitism’ in his speeches and denying the Holocaust. After the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center in America, he published a book titled ‘Islam Condemns Terrorism’.

After that, Adnan became a very famous writer in the Islamic world. His books were sold in most Islamic bookstores around the world and many people watched his television shows.

Many of his books were also translated into Persian and sold in Iran.

Much of his religious propaganda was against Darwin’s theory. In 2007, he sent thousands of copies of his Atlas of Creation, an advocacy of Islam and creationism, to schools in Europe and the United States.

Since then he got involved in many legal cases. His life changed and he got the title of ‘Adnan Oqtar’ which we see in the media these days.

The changes in his lifestyle were so unbelievable to Turkey’s traditional and religious community that rumors spread that Israel had killed Adnan.

In September 2008, a complaint by Adnan led to the shutdown of the website of the Education and Scientific Workers Union, as well as the website of the country’s third-largest newspaper, Watan.

The 1999 case was reopened on charges of extortion and intimidation. Prosecutors claimed that the BAV had used its female members. It was also alleged that the sexual acts of thousands of people who wanted to leave the group were secretly filmed to extort money from the members. The tapes were also threatened to be released.

The families of the young girls, known as ‘Little Cats’, have repeatedly appealed to the public on social media for help in recovering their daughters. But that didn’t matter to them. The biggest political blow to his organization was the changes that took place after the ‘failed coup’ in Turkey in 2016.

The Erdogan government still claims that the coup was carried out by forces linked to its former ally Gülen, while Gülen believes that Erdogan staged a ‘fake coup’ to consolidate his government.

Eventually, Adnan Oqtar got caught up in one of the many cases. They were charged with ‘sexual exploitation of children, rape of women, sexual relations with minors, kidnapping of children, threats and blackmail’. They are also accused of espionage, fraud and fraud using religious sentiments, money laundering, falsification of documents, defying anti-terrorism and anti-trafficking laws, defamation and defamation, defamation, bribery and defying the law and women. He was sent to jail for the crime of violence.

Professor Adnan Oqtar or Haroon Yahya will probably spend the rest of his life in prison.