Long time no see

Hard to believe that it has been almost a year since my last post. I got too caught up with other things, and finishing my degree, and moving to a new city and new lab :) But life is all good. I have hope that I will start writing again and will post more often.

I know this will look like serious bragging, but I cannot help sharing it: an interview by Society for Developmental Biology with me. Just to give you an update on my whereabouts!

Hard-workers for Evolution meet Richard Dawkins

Just some good news and then I have to go back working on my paper.

A couple of weeks ago, we (Hard-workers for Evolution) had a conference talk on Skype with Richard Dawkins and his assistant Paula Kirby because Dawkins was curious to find out about our group! We were extremely happy about this opportunity. Our meeting went great, we talked about our volunteer efforts of translating the UC Berkeley's Understanding Evolution website. Dawkins suggested this kind of work should be done in other languages. We already knew there is another group who started making trasnlations of scientific texts on evolution for Arabic. He was happy to hear this. We are hoping to work on this in the future, starting with a "How to translate a website" document that our group will write and this document will be available on Dawkins' website. I will be updating you as we progress.

The other piece of news is, (and this makes me almost equally happy) the release of Turkish philosophy journal cogito's Fall volume which is dedicated to Darwin and his theory of evolution. I have an article there with Ömer Gökçümen: "Humans and philosophy under the light of evolution". Ömer Gökçümen is a post-doctoral researcher in Boston and without him, this article could not have been a quarter of what it is right now. It was a great pleasure working on this with him.

Considering the strong anti-evolution movement in Turkey, it is always refreshing to see a respectable magazine dedicating a whole volume to the celebration of Darwin and his theory. Other Hard-workers for evolution contributed to this issue as well, and we are very proud of the outcome.

I am planning to graduate in December. Very busy with the experiments because I am working on a manuscript. Next writing the thesis will begin. I always hope to write here more often but we'll see how it goes with paper and thesis writing.

Witty protest of the Darwin cover censorship by Turkish

In Middle East Technical University (METU), one of the most prestigious universities in Turkey, there is a stadium, and on the concrete seats of this stadium there is a giant print that says: DEVRIM (means “revolution” in Turkish). According to the urban legend, this was written by a group of revolutionist students in 1968 with a formula they developed together with chemistry students, and this was such a formula that, no other paint could cover this white paint. All the attempts of deleting it, painting on it by the officials in the years that followed proved to be useless. Obviously, the chemistry students knew what they were doing. So the word “revolution” stayed on, reflecting the revolutionist spirit of this university for decades*.



Yesterday, protesting the recent censorship of Darwin cover by the Turkish national science council of Turkey (TUBITAK), students and faculty at METU got together on the letter “D”. They called this protest “Censoring the censorship”. Because, when you remove “D” from the word “DEVRIM” you are left with “EVRIM”, which means “EVOLUTION” in Turkish.


The head of the Association of Faculty at METU, Prof. Dr. Melih Ersoy, says, “TUBITAK is the institution that should be promoting and encouraging the scientific research and thinking. It is unacceptable and very worrying to see this institution replacing the Darwin cover of the magazine, especially in 2009, the Year of Darwin.”


Photographs by: İsmail Çiftçi

*Now one of the symbols of METU, the DEVRIM print was repainted in 2008, celebrating its 40th anniversary. Pictures of this event are here.