Bartholomew's Notes

UPDATE: See here.

A few days ago I wrote a blog entry on Adnan Oktar, the prolific Turkish author who recently met some Israelis from the self-styled “Sanhedrin”. I noted that Oktar, who uses the pen name Harun Yahya, had previously written a book called The Holocaust Deception; an email has now arrived from Yahya’s lawyer Ceyhun Gokdogan, informing me that the book was in fact “written and published by another person, Nuri Ozbudak, under the name of Harun Yahya. This person has already admitted to have done so by signing a document approved by notary public”. The document is attached to the email.

In 1998 the website Antisemitism and Xenophobia Today recorded that

…Controversy over the book ‘Holocaust Lie – The Inside Story of the Secret History of the Zionist-Nazi Co-operation and the Lie about Jewish Genocide’ continues to attract media attention. In March 1996 Bedri Baykam, a prominent painter and intellectual, published a critique of the book in the Ankara daily Siyah Beyaz (Black and White). Baykam was subsequently sued for slander by Nuri Özbudak, who claims to have written the book under the pseudonym of Harun Yahya. At the trial Baykam exposed the real author as Adnan Oktar (i.e. Adnan Hodja), leader of the Islamist group Bilim Arastirma Vakfi (see Parties, organnizations, movements). In March 1997, however, Özbudak withdrew the case.

This is confusing; it is no secret that Oktar uses the Harun Yahya pseudonym, so how could Oktar have been “exposed” as “the real author”? In a more recent interview with Spiegel Online, Oktar asserts that

Dieses Buch ist nicht von mir, es stammt von einem meiner Freunde, Nuri Özbudak. Er hat seine eigenen Essays unter diesem Titel veröffentlicht. Später haben wir dagegen protestiert, ein Notar hat die Fakten klargestellt. Ich habe nicht gegen den Autoren geklagt, aber gegen die Benutzung meines Namens protestiert. Mein eigenes Buch zu diesem Thema habe ich später veröffentlicht.

This has been translated here:

Oktar: That book wasn’t by me, it was by one of my friends, Nuri Özbudak. He published his own essays under that title. We protested about it later, and a Notary Public clarified the facts. My complaint wasn’t against the author himself, it was against the use of my name. My own book on this subject was published later.

This is also odd: if someone published some essays denying the Holocaust in a way that seemed that I had done it, I would hardly call such a person “my friend”. And I’d have a serious problem with “the author himself”, not just the use of my name.

Holocaust Deception is also discussed in an article posted to Talk Origins by Michael Hopkins in 2003. Hopkins also received an email, which stated that:

I am writing to you from Istanbul, Turkey on behalf of Harun Yahya. I am a regular visitor of TalkOrigins.org and I saw your web page recently. I want to draw your attention to a mistake about Harun Yahya in your review of the SRF in Istanbul. Harun Yahya does not deny the reality of the Holocaust but denounces it. He has a very well known website visited and appreciated by many Jews and people of other faiths called islamdenouncesantisemitism.com. The real version of his book titled The Violence of the Holocaust is enclosed for your reference (Unfortunately it is in Turkish and has not been prepared in English yet). The book posted at http://www.noontidepress.com/catalog/0247.html has not been published and will not be published. I will be very pleased if you correct this information on your website and let us know.

That creates other problems; the book was certainly published, as the Holocaust-denying Institute of Historical Review specfically praised it is as an “attractively laid out volume, with numerous photographs, nine pages of source reference notes, an eight-page bibliography, and a good index” in a review in 1997. Further, Hopkins notes that in 2001 Yahya’s website listed among books available though his foundation, in Turkish and English, “Soykirim Yalani (The Holocaust Hoax),” and that Soykirim Yalani is cited by him in a couple of other books. I also found a cover image on Scribd.

Holocaust Violence takes a different position from Holocaust Deception; here, Yahya indeed asserts that the Holocaust is true – apparently Charles Darwin is to blame for it. However, the covers of the two books are very similar, and there is some overlap of content. Chapter One of Holocaust Deception is entitled “The Untold Story of the Nazi-Zionist Collaboration”, while Chapter One of Holocaust Violence is “The Untold Story of the Nazi-Radical Zionist Collaboration”; most of the sub-headings are the same, although “Zionism” has throughout become “Radical Zionism”, and some other sections are the same. The Holocaust denial material has been replaced with anti-evolutionist screeds, but clearly parts of both books have a common authorship.

And anyway, even if Özbudak is the true author, he’s also a member of Otkar’s “Science Research Foundation”, as can be seen here. Why does Otkar associate with such a person? I would have thought that would be just as problematic for the “Sanhedrin”.

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