Library named after Hürriyet columnist inaugurated in Istanbul

ISTANBUL

A library named after daily Hürriyet’s columnist Doğan Hızlan has been inaugurated by Turkish Education Minister Mahmut Özer inside a high school in Istanbul’s Beşiktaş district.

Speaking at the opening ceremony on April 20, Hızlan advised young people to read books, saying, “Everybody should learn their native language well, and this can only be obtained by reading books.”

The “Doğan Hızlan Library” inside the Yenilevent Anadolu high school is the second library named after him; the first one opened in 2012 in the southern province of Antalya.

Up to 60 students can access the library at any one time in Beşiktaş, where some 13,000 books exist.

“Read all the western and the eastern classics. You don’t need to be a man of words to read them. You will read fluent Turkish when you try to express yourself in the future,” Hızlan said while highlighting the importance of reading books.

“We will be naming libraries after some living legends. We started with Mr. Doğan, who taught us the importance of literature throughout his life,” Özer said in his speech at the ceremony.

“There is no school [in Turkey] without a library now. At the same time, we provided more books to these libraries. There are around 56 million books throughout these libraries. We aim to raise the number to 100 million,” the minister added.