OpEd News (via) reports that Ateizm.org, a prominent non-profit atheist web-site, based in Turkey, was closed down - for the second time - December 2007 on orders from a Turkish court. The site, which was founded in 2000 by three young Turkish atheists, hosts an online discussion board named Ateistforum which is one of the busier destinations for the country’s online community.

Over the years, the site has been the target of several hacking and denial of service attacks - all of which in managed to survive. However, things became more difficult in June 2007 when - without warning - the site was closed to its Turkish audience following a court order issued in response to legal action taken by a Turkish creationist named Adnan Oktar (now widely known by his pen name “Harun Yahya”). Adnan Oktar is the founder and honorary president of Bilim Araştırma Vakfı (BAV) through which he propogates much of his material. BAV is a frequent target for Ateizm.org which is critical of the creationist group, and which puts a deal of effort into debunkuing its claims.

Since the site is hosted in the US, it remained available internationally but could not be accessed by its Turkish target audience. So the people behind the site changed their domain name - to Ateizm1.org - and kept on going. Until December, when Ateizm.org (then called Ateizm1.org) was closed to Turkish audience for the second time following another court order.

Oktar has a history of turning to the judges to silence his critics. in April 2007 he filed a libel lawsuit against the virtual community Ek$i Sözlük. The court ordered the service provider to close the site to public access and temporarily suspended so that the entry on Oktar could be expunged and locked. In August of the same year, he managed to convince a Turkish court to block internet access to WordPress.com to all of Turkey. His lawyers argued that blogs on WordPress.com contained libelous material on Oktar and his colleague which WordPress.com staff was unwilling to remove.

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