Survivors of Turkish televangelist and cult leader Adnan Oktar have related horror stories and incidents of abuse they were subjected to at his command. Earlier this month, Oktar was sentenced to over 1,000 years in prison by Turkish authorities for charges that included espionage, blackmail, and rape.
Several survivors have come forward to talk about how they suffered under the yoke of a televangelist who turned into a cult leader. Reports in the UK-based Dailymail indicate that Oktar will appeal against his sentencing. When Oktar’s popularity was at its peak, he used to broadcast his sermons with semi-nude women standing by his side.
Survivors spoke to The Sunday Times about what it was like to live with the cult leader. Oktar called his female survivors ‘kittens’ and his male survivors ‘lions’. Several raids against Oktar and his followers in 2018 led to his arrest by Turkish police. There were also dozens of his followers arrested. He also wrote several books under the pen-name Harun Yahya and gave Creationism theory against Darwin’s theory of evolution.
An anonymous woman survivor narrated in the newspaper how her 16-year-old self was sexually abused by Oktar. When she was 20, he also forced her to undergo a nose job without anesthesia. The victim said she is still traumatized by the brutal surgery. ‘I can still remember the hammer. I was counting how many times they were hitting the hammer and the chisel to my nose,’ she was quoted as saying by the newspaper. Ceylan Ozgul, another survivor from Oktar’s cult, joined the group when she was 24 years old in 2006. She later became one of the most prominent members of the group before she left and accused the group of abuse.
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