Biography:

Rustem Ertug Altinay is a graduate student at Bogazici University, Istanbul. His main areas of interest are identity politics and social studies of science. His articles have been published in the journals Feminist Media Studies, Women's Studies Quarterly, International Journal of Feminist Approaches to Bioethics, Journal of Women's History, National Association of Student Anthropologists (NASA) e-Journal as well as edited volumes including Encyclopedia of Gender and Society (SAGE), Encyclopedia of Gay Folklife (M. E. Sharpe), Encyclopedia of Motherhood (SAGE), Encyclopedia of Infanticide (Edwin Mellen Press), and Encyclopedia of Movies and American Culture (ABC-CLIO). He has also held fellowships at the University of Salzburgs Center for Ethics and Poverty Research, Austria, and Georg Eckert Institute for International Textbook Research, Germany.

Abstract:

(Not) Remembering Darwin in the Darwin year. Evolution, politics and media in Turkey

Bicentennial of Darwins birthday, and sesquicentennial of publication of his book The Origin of Species, 2009 is celebrated as Darwin year in Turkey, as in many other countries. Hence the editor of Bilim ve Teknik [Science and Technic], Turkeys first and most popular scientific magazine published by The Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey since 1967, decided to devote the cover and 16 pages of the March 2009 issue of the magazine to Darwin and the theory of evolution. However, the vice president of the institution, who was also a member of the editorial board, refused to approve the publication of the issue. The pages devoted to Darwin were not published, and the cover story was replaced by global warming, resulting in a one week delay in the publication of the issue, and the editor was dismissed after the incident. Within the general context of the country where political Islam and Islamic conservatism have been on the rise, this incident disturbed some people greatly, while relieving others. In this paper, I seek to focus on interviews, newspaper articles, blogs, artwork and other visual and written material about the subject to discuss the role of evolution in contemporary Turkish social imaginary, how the discussions about evolution, religion, and science education are shaped through multiple social and political dynamics, and how Darwinism can and should be communicated in the media.