Think Christmas has gotten way too secular? Turkey may be the place you want to move because they make sure kids stick with religion, though the 2.2% who are not Muslim will be tough to find so your Christmas dinner might be poorly attended. Knowing how other countries treat science is important to help us appreciate how we do. Sure, people can whine in America if some kooky school district has right wing people wanting to give religion equal time in science classes but it's not exactly life threatening to tell kids dinosaurs ate coconuts - the anti-science left won't even give their kids vaccines and that's a much more dangerous problem. So fringes on both sides in America have their pet causes where they want to map science to their world view yet that freedom to be wrong is actually a good thing - without a culture of freedom, science can't excel.
Muslim countries are not beset by hyped up science controversies - because there are none. Since the government is religious in all of those countries, whether they admit they are or not, they can just pass a law banning pesky facts like that *gasp* humans had a common ancestor and that is that. The science mostly stinks due to that kind of culture, though most scientists likely do what they can to get around it.
Turkey briefly put an end to any evolution 'debate' by simply pretending evolution doesn't exist - or at least making it difficult to find. Their Internet Service Provider filters blocked an evolution website...but only for kids. You know, just like they do with porn sites. Yes, if you used the 'child friendly' setting on Turkey's ISP filter, they assumed you didn't want your children corrupted by science, along with drugs, obscenity, terrorism and prostitution. Creationist anti-science sites stayed up just fine, though.
Fear not, biologists, they reversed it a day later and said the evolution site had other content that may have gotten it blocked. They also reversed a block on the Richard Dawkins website earlier this year so the Turks are making progress again.
It's a difficult balance, I get that. Turkey has the most secular government of all Muslim countries and while more Western countries regard that as a grudging positive, fundamentalists in Turkey do not. Unlike American fundamentalists, hysterical concerns of militant atheists notwithstanding, a Muslim fundamentalist will shoot a government official who pushes too hard.
If you've ever been to Istanbul, you can walk across a literal bridge from Europe to Asia; let's hope that symbolism also remains.
