Adnan Oktar: Turkey's Richard Warman

Turkish creationist leading suppression of evolution in Turkey

Since successfully convincing a Turkish court to block access to Richard Dawkins' website, it would seem he's been a very busy man.

This week Oktar was successful in getting the website of the Vatan newspaper blocked in Turkey.

Once again, Oktar cited personal abuse and defamation as his reason for seeking the ban. "The reason for this block is a court decision sought by Adnan Oktar due to reader comments on an article printed on our site about his 'community'," Vatan explained.

Once again, Canada's pro-Human Rights Commission crowd has been eerily silent on Oktar's use of the notions of "defamation" and the "encouragement of hatred" to silence critics of his writings.

Some of the more intellectually impoverished members of the pro-HRC crowd have offered characteristically worthless commentary on the topic.

But this predominating silence is so eery because Canada has its own equivalent to Oktar -- Richard Warman, a multiple-time litigant under the Canadian Human Rights Commission, who has sought to silence many of his critics via legal action.

Of course, Warman himself has had his conduct scrutinized and been found wanting. In a country like Turkey, where the notion of free speech seems to carry so little influence with leaders, one has to wonder how likely it is that Oktar's conduct in his pro-censorship quest will receive the same scrutiny.

Not terribly likely.

Ironically, one would think that Canada's pro-HRC crowd would have a little more to say about this. After all, Oktar's targets, to date, have been Richard Dawkins, beloved atheist du jour and a liberal Turkish newspaper.

Then again, to deal with the issues being raised by Oktar's litigious nature would only shed additional light on their own warts -- and that is something that all too many of them simply could not bear.

A Bizarre Taste of Their Own Medicine

However will Canada's pro-CHRC crowd carve this Turkey?

In what must certainly be regarded as a rather bizarre twist for many supporters of the Canadian Human Rights Commission, global atheist heavyweight Richard Dawkins' website has been banned in Turkey.

In what appears to the rational mind to be a rather befuddling and childish complaint, well-established Turkish creationist Adnan Oktar -- also known by his pen name, Harun Yahya -- complained that Dawkins insulted him on numerous online forums and blogs.

"We are not against freedom of speech or expression but you cannot insult people," said Seda Aral, Oktar's press assistant. "We found the comments hurtful. It was not a scientific discussion. There was a line and the limit has been passed. We have used all the legal means to stop this site. We asked them to remove the comments but they did not."

Oktar has described Dawkins' criticisms of Oktar's the Atlas of Creation as "defamatory" and "blasphemous".

Interestingly, many of Richard Dawkins' most fervent supporters in Canada were also wildly supportive of the complaints filed against Western Standard publisher Ezra Levant when he published the infamous "Prophet Mohammad cartoons" that had incited riots in Denmark.

Levant more recently faces complains regarding his re-publishing of the letter written by Reverend Stephen Boissoin to the Red Deer Advocate.

For the record, LGBT website Xtra.ca has also re-printed the letter. Whether or not they'll be subject of a CHRC complaint has yet to be seen, but should be considered fairly predictable.

The nature of the complaint was that the cartoons in question were "defamatory", and "encouraged hatred".

Meanwhile, Oktar also attempted to have Dawkins' book, The God Delusion, claiming that it encourages hatred of religion. Fortunately, Oktar was unsuccessful to that end.

It should be interesting to see how the pro-Dawkins, pro-CHRC crowd will react to this little nugget.

But if they have any sense in their heads whatsoever -- and in some cases, that has yet to be seen -- they may be persuaded to take a new stance toward the runaway CHRC.

"In the words of the late great Colonel Sanders: I'm too drunk to taste this chicken."