Diyarbakir book fair returns after 4-year hiatus
Diyarbakir’s book fair, one of the main cultural events of the region, had been stopped due to security reasons in 2015. Now that it is back, thousands of residents from Diyarbakir and region came to pick up a book or two.
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.
