DIYARBAKIR, Turkey — Over the weekend, Elazig Street, which leads to the Diyarbakir Fair and Congress Center, was filled with cars and pedestrians — possibly reminding an onlooker of the happier times for the region more than a decade ago, when large crowds gathered on this road to celebrate Nowruz, the Kurdish New Year. But, this time, the crowds — families, young people and children — are not heading for dancing and singing but to a book fair.

The Diyarbakir Book Fair, the largest literary gathering in Turkey’s southeast since its inception in 2010, has returned to the city after a four-year hiatus. The fair had been suspended in 2015, when the organizers announced that the bombings and clashes in the city made it impossible to maintain security. 

The six-day fair, held Sept. 25-30, had a good revival, with 153 publishing houses — with books in Turkish and Kurdish — and associations participating. It also hosted roughly 110,000 visitors — 20,000 more than the last fair in 2014.

“It is a positive sign that 110,000 people turned up for this fair,” Muharrem Erbey, an author and human rights activist, told Al-Monitor. “Diyarbakir is a city that reads. I have learned that the Kurdish-language books sold well, too,” he added, referring to the stands of the 30 publishing houses that displayed Kurdish-language books.