Turkey sentences sex cult leader to over 1,000 years in jail
- Adnan Oktar was detained in 2018 for crimes including sexual assault, sexual abuse of minors, fraud and attempted political and military espionage
- The Muslim TV televangelist preached creationism and conservative values but told a judge that he had close to 1,000 girlfriends
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Adnan Oktar preached creationism and conservative values while women in revealing outfits – many of whom appeared to have had plastic surgery – danced around him to upbeat music in the TV studio.
The bearded 64-year-old was detained in 2018 along with more than 200 other suspects as part of a crackdown on his group by the financial crimes unit of the Istanbul police.
He was sentenced to 1,075 years for crimes including sexual assault, sexual abuse of minors, fraud and attempted political and military espionage, the private NTV broadcaster reported. The court also sentenced two executives in Oktar’s organisation, Tarkan Yavas and Oktar Babuna, to 211 and 186 years, respectively.
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He has denied links to Gulen and has called suggestions that he led a sex cult an “urban myth”. Some 236 defendants faced charges, 78 of whom were held in custody pending trial, Anadolu reported.
Most of the suspects have maintained their innocence since the first court hearing in September 2019.
During the trial, which was followed closely by Turkish media for months, the court heard lurid and harrowing details of sex crimes.
Oktar told the presiding judge in December that he had close to 1,000 girlfriends. “There is an overflowing of love in my heart for women. Love is a human quality. It is a quality of a Muslim,” he said in another hearing in October.
He added on separate occasion: “I am extraordinarily potent.”
Oktar first came to public attention in the 1990s when he was the leader of a sect that was caught up in multiple sex scandals.
His online A9 television channel began broadcasting in 2011, drawing denunciations from Turkey’s religious leaders.
The channel, which was often fined by Turkey’s media watchdog RTUK, was seized by the state and shut down in the wake of the police crackdown on Oktar’s group.
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One of the women at his trial, identified only as CC, told the court that Oktar had repeatedly sexually abused her and other women.
Some of the women he had raped were forced to take contraceptive pills, CC told the court, adding that she herself had joined when she was 17 years old.
Asked about 69,000 contraception pills found in his home by the police, Oktar said they were used to treat skin disorders and menstrual irregularities.
Turkish authorities demolished Oktar’s villa on the Asian side of Istanbul – which he also used for his TV studio – and confiscated all his property in 2018.
Oktar rejects the Darwinian theory of evolution and has written a 770-page book called The Atlas of Creation under the pen name, Harun Yahya.
The book – which argues against evolution, saying all life was created by God in a “perfect” form – was spotted last year on a bookshelf behind European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde as she spoke at an online summit on the pandemic.
Thousands of free copies of the book had been mailed to politicians, journalists and schools around the world. Lagarde had never read the book, a person familiar with the matter said.
Additional reporting by Bloomberg
