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There has been a fall of around 20% in book sales over the past year in the Frankfurt Book Fair's special guest country Turkey, according to Metin Celal, secretary general of the Turkish Publishers Association, reports monstersandcritics.com.
However the recent decline is attributed to increasingly difficult economic conditions, and to the government's policy of distributing free textbooks to all state school students. Celal said that the policy has resulted in many small bookstores in central Anatolia having to close, as selling textbooks had been a main part of their profits.
The move, thought up by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, was tied into the 'Let's go to school, girls!' project, aimed at improving female attendance at schools in order to raise literacy levels across the poorest provinces, especially in south- east Turkey.