Early life and education

Akyol was born to renowned right-wing journalist Taha Akyol and received his early education in Ankara

Ankara

Ankara is the capital of Turkey and the country's second largest city after Istanbul. The city has a mean elevation of , and as of 2010 the metropolitan area in the entire Ankara Province had a population of 4.4 million....

. He later graduated from the Istanbul Nişantaşı Anadolu Lisesi

Nisantasi Anadolu Lisesi

Nişantaşı Anadolu Lisesi is a secondary school located on Vali Konağı Caddesi, Nişantaşı.It was formerly known as the English High School for Boys or the English High School. It was established in 1905 as an English school; management was transferred to the Ministry of National Education in...

 and the International Relations Department of Boğaziçi University

Bogaziçi University

Boğaziçi University is a public university located on the European side of the Bosphorus strait in Istanbul, Turkey. It has five faculties and two schools offering undergraduate degrees, and six institutes offering graduate degrees...

. He earned his masters in the History Department of the same university with a thesis on Turkey's Kurdish question, which he later extended to a popular book titled, Kürt Sorununu Yeniden Düşünmek: Yanlış Giden Neydi, Bundan Sonra Nereye? (Rethinking The Kurdish Question: What Went Wrong, What Next?)

Career

Akyol writes regular columns for two Turkish dailies, Star and Hürriyet Daily News. He has criticized both Islamic extremism

Islamic extremism

Islamic extremism refers to two related and partially overlapping but also distinct aspects of extremist interpretations and pursuits of Islamic ideology:...

 and Turkish secularism, which he likens to Jacobin

Jacobin (politics)

A Jacobin , in the context of the French Revolution, was a member of the Jacobin Club, a revolutionary far-left political movement. The Jacobin Club was the most famous political club of the French Revolution. So called from the Dominican convent where they originally met, in the Rue St. Jacques ,...

ism and fundamentalism

Fundamentalism

Fundamentalism is strict adherence to specific theological doctrines usually understood as a reaction against Modernist theology. The term "fundamentalism" was originally coined by its supporters to describe a specific package of theological beliefs that developed into a movement within the...

.
His articles are often friendly to the incumbent Justice and Development Party

Justice and Development Party (Turkey)

The Justice and Development Party , abbreviated JDP in English and AK PARTİ or AKP in Turkish, is a centre-right political party in Turkey. The party is the largest in Turkey, with 327 members of parliament...

.

Over the years, he has given seminars in several universities or think-tanks in the U.S.

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 and the U.K.

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

 on issues of Islam, politics, and Turkish affairs. He also spoke at TED

TED (conference)

TED is a global set of conferences owned by the private non-profit Sapling Foundation, formed to disseminate "ideas worth spreading"....

, giving a lecture on Faith versus Tradition in Islam.

Mustafa Akyol's articles on Islamic issues, in which he mostly argues against Islamic extremism and terrorism from a Muslim point of view and defends the Islamic faith, have appeared in publications like Foreign Affairs

Foreign Affairs

Foreign Affairs is an American magazine and website on international relations and U.S. foreign policy published since 1922 by the Council on Foreign Relations six times annually...

, The Wall Street Journal

The Wall Street Journal

The Wall Street Journal is an American English-language international daily newspaper. It is published in New York City by Dow Jones & Company, a division of News Corporation, along with the Asian and European editions of the Journal....

, Washington Post, The Forward

The Forward

The Forward , commonly known as The Jewish Daily Forward, is a Jewish-American newspaper published in New York City. The publication began in 1897 as a Yiddish-language daily issued by dissidents from the Socialist Labor Party of Daniel DeLeon...

, First Things

First Things

First Things is an ecumenical journal focused on creating a "religiously informed public philosophy for the ordering of society". The journal is inter-denominational and inter-religious, representing a broad intellectual tradition of Christian and Jewish critique of contemporary society...

, Huffington Post, The Weekly Standard

The Weekly Standard

The Weekly Standard is an American neoconservative opinion magazine published 48 times per year. Its founding publisher, News Corporation, debuted the title September 18, 1995. Currently edited by founder William Kristol and Fred Barnes, the Standard has been described as a "redoubt of...

, The Washington Times

The Washington Times

The Washington Times is a daily broadsheet newspaper published in Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States. It was founded in 1982 by Unification Church founder Sun Myung Moon, and until 2010 was owned by News World Communications, an international media conglomerate associated with the...

, The American Enterprise

The American Enterprise

The American Enterprise was a public policy magazine published by the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C. Its editorial stance was politically conservative, generally advocating free-market economics and a neoconservative U.S. foreign policy.The magazine was published approximately...

, National Review

National Review

National Review is a biweekly magazine founded by the late author William F. Buckley, Jr., in 1955 and based in New York City. It describes itself as "America's most widely read and influential magazine and web site for conservative news, commentary, and opinion."Although the print version of the...

, FrontPage Magazine, Newsweek

Newsweek

Newsweek is an American weekly news magazine published in New York City. It is distributed throughout the United States and internationally. It is the second-largest news weekly magazine in the U.S., having trailed Time in circulation and advertising revenue for most of its existence...

and Islam Online.

Akyol is also author of the English-language book, Islam Without Extremes: A Muslim Case For Liberty. (W.W. Norton) The book, according to the publisher, is "a desperately needed intellectual basis for the reconcilability of Islam and religious, political, economic, and social freedoms."

Intelligent design advocacy

Akyol used to be an outspoken promoter of intelligent design

Intelligent design

Intelligent design is the proposition that "certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection." It is a form of creationism and a contemporary adaptation of the traditional teleological argument for...

  and was identified as a former spokesman for Science Research Foundation (Bilim Araştırma Vakfı), an Islamic creationist

Islamic creationism

Islamic views on evolution refers to varying Muslim beliefs on how the life came to be. Muslims acknowledge God as the Creator, as explained in the Qur'an. Other than that, Muslim views on evolution vary...

 group, started by Adnan Oktar

Adnan Oktar

Adnan Oktar , also known as Harun Yahya, is an author and Islamic creationist. In 2007, he sent thousands of unsolicited copies of the Atlas of Creation advocating Islamic creationism to American scientists, members of Congress, and science museums...

. But Akyol later noted that he ended all his "cooperation with [Bilim Araştırma Vakfı]... due to some serious disagreements on issues other than intelligent design." He was also affiliated with the Discovery Institute

Discovery Institute

The Discovery Institute is a non-profit public policy think tank based in Seattle, Washington, best known for its advocacy of intelligent design...

. He has testified in the Kansas evolution hearings

Kansas evolution hearings

The Kansas evolution hearings were a series of hearings held in Topeka, Kansas, United States May 5 to May 12, 2005 by the Kansas State Board of Education and its State Board Science Hearing Committee to change how evolution and the origin of life would be taught in the state's public high school...

 in favor of introducing Intelligent Design and arranged a government-sponsored Intelligent Design conference in Istanbul. He also used to be the director of International Relations at the "Intercultural Dialogue Platform", a subsidiary of the Journalists and Writers Foundation (Gazeteciler ve Yazarlar Vakfı), founded by sympathizers of Fethullah Gülen

Fethullah Gülen

Muhammed Fethullah Gülen is a Turkish preacher, author, educator, and Sufi Muslim scholar living in self-imposed exile in Pennsylvania . He is the founder and leader of the Gülen movement...

.

External links

• Akyol's blog
• Yes, We Can! Toward a Brave New Turkey. Mustafa Akyol discusses Turkey’s historical and contemporary struggle toward political and cultural modernity at Boston University's 2009 Campagna-Kerven Lecture on Modern Turkey.