The Central Anatolian city of Konya has the highest library usage by locals, with 2,459,197 people borrowing books in 2017 according to a Turkish Statistics Institute (TurkStat) report, while Turkey’s most densely populated city of İstanbul comes in second with 1,187,000 people making use of libraries, the T24 news website reported on Tuesday.
The western city of Manisa is ranked third with 946,254 residents actively using libraries.
TurkStat’s “Cities with Libraries” list for 2017 indicates that there are 1,146 libraries in the country and that 25,091,232 people benefited from them.
Ankara is the leader in the number of libraries with 43, followed by Nevşehir and İzmir with 38 libraries each. İstanbul took the third place with 36.
Diyarbakır ranks first in the number of registered library members with 92,349. İzmir follows with 91,118 members, and İstanbul was ranked third with 88,178.
Library usage doesn’t seem to improve the population’s reading habits. In another TurkStat report in 2016, books ranked 235th in a study of consumption habits of Turks. People spend approximately one minute a day reading, while they spend six hours watching TV and three hours surfing the net.