of Turkey, started to participate. Adnan Oktar's name began to appear regularly in the press, sometimes in the headlines. Later that year he published a 550-page book titled Judaism and Freemasonry, based on the antisemitic canard that state offices, universities, political groups and media were influenced by a "hidden group" "to erode the spiritual, religious, and moral values of the Turkish people and make them like animals." Oktar was arrested on the grounds of promoting a theocratic revolution, and he was detained 19 months, though never formally charged. In 1986, Oktar spent 10 months in a mental hospital, where he was diagnosed with schizophrenia and obsessive-compulsive personality disorder, but he maintains that he was not mentally ill but a political "prisoner" who was punished because of the publication of Judaism and Freemasonry. Throughout the 1980s and early 1990s, Oktar built up his community. His followers were especially active recruiting at summer resorts along the Sea of Marmara. The social organization within the group became more hierarchical and took on a Messianic nature. Two themes one ex-follower remembered from the 1980s and early 1990s were a strong hatred of Jews and Freemasons, and in a move away from orthodox Islam, abandoning belief in hadith."Suddenly Adnan Hodja repudiated all oral traditions relating to the words and deeds of Muhammad (hadith) and decided that the Koran would be the only point of reference. Henceforth, he reduced the five daily prayers to three, and he dropped the veiling of women. He told us the Mehdi would emerge from Turkey, and he would come with an army of youth. He never said that he was the Mehdi himself, but we all believed that he was." Oktar says that due to the anarchy and terror in those years, he was unable to continue his studies. He had already begun working on his books, so when he left school he devoted his energy to his books. In 1990, he founded the Science Research Foundation (SRF, or, in Turkish, Bilim Araştırma Vakfı, or BAV), Members discarded their "overtly Islamic garments" in favor of "designer clothing" and "proclaimed themselves supporters of the ideals" of the founder of modern Turkey, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, despite the fact that Atatürk was secularist. BAV held conferences and seminars that targeted "mass awareness concerning what the real underlying causes of social and political conflicts are", which he identified as materialism and Darwinism. Others in