When the Justice and Development Party (AKP) lost its parliamentary majority in the June 7, 2015, election, scientists in Turkey were "euphoric," according to Nature (June 16, 2015), hoping that the next parliament will "reverse the creeping restrictions on academic freedom and the seeping away of scientific standards that have been a feature of the AKP's 12 years of political domination" — including the party's support for creationism.
As NCSE previously reported, there is a long-standing concern about the state of evolution education in Turkey at both the pre-college and the university level. A useful review by Zehra Sayers and Zuhal Özcan, writing in APS News (June 2013), concluded, "Turkey is raising a generation of biologists/scientists whose grasp of scientific thinking is flawed and whose ability to participate in modern biology is correspondingly compromised."
The effects of antievolution activity are felt beyond the classroom as well. In 2013, for example, the Science and Technological Research Council of Turkey (TÜBİTAK), the main funder of scientific research in Turkey, denied a funding application for a summer workshop on evolutionary biology in Turkey on the grounds that "evolution is a controversial subject," according to Science Insider (July 5, 2013).
In a Pew Research Center survey (PDF, p. 132) of Muslims in Turkey asking, "Thinking about evolution, which comes closer to your view? Humans and other living things have evolved over time [or] Humans and other living things have existed in their present form since the beginning of time," 49% of respondents preferred the former and 35% preferred the latter. In a survey (PDF, p. 43) in the United States in 2014, 65% of respondents preferred the former and 31% preferred the latter.