Publishing and Libraries

The minorities living in Ottoman Empire established printing houses in Turkey shortly after the printing press was invented in Europe. The first printing house was founded by Jews in 1494 and the first book, presumed to be a commentary on the Old Testament, was printed the same year. The first book to be published was a Turkish-Arabic dictionary entitled “Lûgat-i Vankuli” and this was followed by other works.

The first private printing house was the one which used to print the newspaper entitled “Ceride-i Havadis”, first published in 1840.

All books used to be written and duplicated by hand in Turkey until the establishment of the first printing houses. The concentration of scholars in scientific pursuit especially in Istanbul, the capital, and other major centers of knowledge such as Bursa, Amasya and Manisa during the “golden age” of the Ottoman Empire (15th-17th centuries) prompted an increase in the production of manuscripts. Thanks to this heritage, Turkey is the richest country in the world in terms of the number of manuscripts. Turkey possesses 300,000 volumes of manuscripts at present. Researchers all around the world benefit from these works in carrying out their scientific studies.

During the period between the founding of the first Turkish printing house in 1729 and the adoption of the Latin alphabet in 1928, a total of only 20,000 works were published. During the next 50 years, however, the number of works published exceeded 200,000. Bearing in mind that this figure has multiplied in recent years, the significance of the Republic and the Atatürk reforms on the cultural life of the country is evident.




Both domestic and foreign publications and works of art in all fields
are available in bookstores in Turkey


The number of publishers registered in the ISBN (International Standard Book Number) system rose to 12,655, the number of books with an ISBN increased to 173,802, and the number of periodicals with an ISSN (International Standard Serial Number) jumped to 5,838 by the end of 2005. The number of books compiled was 17,215 and the number of periodicals compiled was 3,029 the same year.

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