A Nation of readers?
It seems that Ataturk’s vast literacy program some hundred years ago bore fruits. Turkey is a nation of committed readers, judging by the impressive selection of Ankara’s bookshops. It struck me when earlier in the week, I had to wait for a couple of hours in the Panora shopping mall, an exclusive shopping mall in the newly built neighbourhood of Or-an.
It is the type of mall I tend to avoid, with the usual high and middle-end fashion brands, home decoration stores and indistinct cafés, but that day I had no choice but to wait there. Uninspiringly touring the mall, I came across the Arkadaş book shop on the second floor. My first surprise was to find such bookstore in a shopping mall (they usually don’t mix), my second surprise was to see how comprehensive the multilingual literature section was, with most classics in their original language together with niche contemporary authors and Nobel prize laureates, including of course Turkish writer Orhan Pamuk who won the prize in 2006. The children book section was as expansive as the adult one, if not more, in an eagerness to prepare the next generation of readers.
Some of the statistics I found online (I don’t know how reliable they are) would indicate that Turkish people read more on average than Americans, Germans, or Italians, but less than France, Russia, China, and India. However, such statistics do not take into consideration the type of literature being read. (https://malwarwickonbooks.com/which-countries-read-the-most/).
On the other hand, an article published by the liberal leaning Hurriyet daily news, the oldest English-language news outlet in Turkey, reported that more than 60 percent of Turks do not read books at all. They based their statement on a socio-economic survey conducted by Istanbul’s Kadir Has University and based on people living in the centre of 26 cities across the country. (https://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/61-percent-of-turks-do-not-read-books-survey-140919).
So, as usual with statistics, we don’t know if people are reading more or less in Turkey. From my modest position of someone wandering around the cafés of Ankara, I can confirm that I see many people reading all the time. As curious as I am, I can’t help but peep at their book to see what they are reading, and I am always impressed by the range of Turkish as well as foreign authors. These literary cafés are frequented mainly by Ankara’s intellectual elite, the Ataturk-revering professionals who graduated from Ankara’s top universities and dislike the current government. Now powerless, they find comfort in reading the world’s classics.
