If we are not reading books, what are these fairs?

There is a side of us that constantly complains that our habit of reading books is gradually disappearing. There is a great deal of data that would justify the finding that the internet, social media, television and new forms of socializing leave no room for reading books.

There is no doubt that living in great haste and bustle, and excessive consumption, also determine our reading habits. As for how we read what we read in this bustle and how much we can digest it, that is a question we remember with anguish.

Against this anguishing picture, the interest shown in the 37th International Istanbul TÜYAP Book Fair, held last week, may give an entirely different impression. 611 thousand 444 people attended the Book Fair, which lasted 9 days between 10 and 18 November. Given the fair's transport situation, this figure is not a small number when compared with the entire population of Istanbul. The pictures of the crowds trying to flow toward the fair over the overpass on the weekend were truly a tear-jerking sight for the sake of interest shown in books.

When we think this sight together with the current pessimistic discourses on reading books, we have to accept that some of our assessments are either misplaced or incomplete.

Truly, our book-reading habits, our lifestyle, our relations with knowledge and with those who have knowledge, and our ways of acquiring knowledge are facing a radical change. We need to view this change sociologically in a positive light and develop new models for our sociology. But it is also certain that we need to adopt an attitude independent of acting from the outset with pessimism or optimism.

At the book fair on Saturday I had a meeting-with-readers and signing event at the Vadi Publications stand. We shared the same stand with the very valuable poet and thinker Cahit Koytak. Apart from the times we chatted with our own readers, having the opportunity to chat with him at length and to satisfy our longing was my greatest gain from the fair. Cahit Koytak is publishing his new poetry books with Vadi Publications. Two of his books have been published under the titles "Alçak Sesle ve Divanece" and "ilk Atlas."

I bought his books of course, but with him I talked mostly about his article "Fitnenin Maliyetine Giriş," which he wrote in the seventies under the pseudonym İbrahim Arif in the journal Talebe and which for a time constituted a strong reference text for Islamist thought and movement. In my view that article is a text that amounts to an important distance covered and an important milestone set, in that period, for the saga of Islamism in Turkey.

In the stolen moments of the signing and meeting with readers, I tried to visit other stands and buy new or old books that had escaped my eye. From İnsan Publications, I bought the newly released book Barbar, Modern, Medeni by my valuable brother, the Chief Advisor and Spokesperson to the President, İbrahim Kalın, but I could not risk standing in the long reader queue to have it signed; I had barely wrested an hour's leave to wander from my own stand.

Yeni Şafak's Ketebe Publications has covered great distance in a very short time and brought a new breath to publishing. All of Mustafa Armağan's works are meeting their readers in new and quality editions. We visited him too and had a chat.

In passing we dropped by Okur Kitaplığı. Passing in front of Okur Kitaplığı, which I have followed attentively since its first publications, I got caught on Metin Önal Mengüşoğlu's books.

Mengüşoğlu, who is also a close friend of Cahit Koytak, has always had a special place in my view. I thought he was a name I always followed closely, for the consistency of his own thought and beliefs, his literary-poetic performance in expressing them, and his sincerity. But I was frankly surprised to see how many books of his had escaped my following. To his earlier thought-biography works, each of which one cannot get enough of, namely Mağrur Öfke: Necip Fazıl, Müstesna Şair Mehmet Akif and Bilge Terzi: Mehmet Sait Çekmegil, he has added a new one: Felsefe Sıfır Din Bir'di: Sezai Karakoç.

While speaking about Karakoç, of course, Mengüşoğlu largely tells about himself too, just as in the others, and in total the matter turns into a kind of autobiography. But Bir Kelime Mesafesi, a more directly autobiographical book, is an autobiographical story that begins in Malatya from the sixties and continues with Istanbul, Ankara and Bursa, and in fact, with a very valuable, powerful narration, gives at the same time a very special and exceptional history of Islamist thought and of publishing, journal-making and literature.

Starting from his first work Gavur Kayırıcılar (a very pleasant story book I read when I was of high school age, why indeed could I not find it at the stand, is it out of print, or did I not see it?), the last of Mengüşoğlu's books, which number as many as 26, as an Asian bard, has been Din ve Darbe in the context of 15 July.

Unlike the 15 July stories that everyone now knows closely, it is the story of religions against religion, of the false little gods who deceive people with God and who, as a part of our lives, right next to us, are ready at any moment to lead us, our children and our loved ones astray. Even if the reason these little gods have not staged a coup is that they have not yet found the opportunity, each of them could also be like a FETÖ that has not been given the opportunity.

With the one-hour escape I made from the Vadi Publications stand, this is all I could tour.

In sum, there is no pessimistic picture about books. Books are being published in excess and in variety, and reader interest is not small either.

Meanwhile there is not one fair or two. Fair events are organized in all the cities of Anatolia, and books meet their readers and readers meet their authors. This week on Friday there is a book fair organized by the municipality in Elazığ too; perhaps I will have the chance to tour there the stands I could not tour.