Turkey to print copies of Quran ‘24/7’ to send to Muslim countries

KASTAMONU – Doğan News Agency

DHA photo

Turkey’s top cleric has said his Directorate of Religious Affairs (Diyanet) will print copies of the Quran “24/7” to send to Muslims in other countries.

Diyanet President Mehmet Görmez said they would print copies of the Quran at a press in Ankara’s Sincan district.

“We will send copies of the Quran to our Muslim brothers living in many countries, who long for the Quran, after printing it 24/7 at a press in Sincan,” Görmez said on Nov. 4, speaking during the opening ceremony of a three-day workshop on “common mistakes in Quran reading and conflicts between schools of Islam” in the Black Sea province of Kastamonu.

“[This press in Sincan] will only print copies of the Quran and the Diyanet will transport them to every corner of the world,” said Görmez, adding that he hoped the Quran would be printed in “every language.”

“We have opened a translation bureau and we have a small unit under the presidency that has been designated for translation. Thank God, we have managed to print translated copies of the Quran in 16 different languages over the past two years. But there are more than just 16 languages spoken around the world,” he said. 

The statement came less than a year after the Diyanet announced that 4,000 copies of the Quran translated into the western and eastern dialects of the Armenian language would be distributed to libraries and civil organizations in Turkey for free. 

The Diyanet has published 1,150 volumes since it was founded in 1924, but the variety of its publications significantly increased after the 1990s.