Walked into a library in Istanbul and found a whole section of empty shelves

I was in Istanbul last month visiting a friend and we stopped by this public library near Taksim Square. They had a whole floor dedicated to Turkish literature from the 20th century but at least half the shelves were completely empty. I asked the librarian and she just shrugged and said certain authors got 'removed' after the 2016 coup attempt. Has anyone else run into something like this where books just vanish from public spaces?

2 comments

2 Comments

the_joel11d agoTop Commenter

Actually that timing might be a bit off. The purges of academics and journalists started earlier, around 2015, not right after the 2016 coup attempt. My cousin lives in Ankara and she said libraries were already getting stripped before then, especially anything related to Kurdish authors or leftist writers. The librarian probably just gave you the short answer because it's easier than getting into the whole complicated history.

claire6411d ago

the librarian probably just gave you the short answer" - yeah that tracks honestly. but i've been thinking about how nobody talks about the international publishers that got scared and stopped shipping books there starting around 2014. my friend worked at a distributor and said a lot of european houses just flat out refused to send anything political to turkey way before the coup.