"No More Schools Without Libraries" Project launched by the Ministry of National Education on October 26, 2021 under the auspices of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's spouse Emine Erdoğan with the purpose of decreasing opportunity difference among schools was completed on December 31, 2021. Within the framework of the project, new libraries were established in 16,361 schools and the number of books in all schools continued to increase. Before the project, the number of books in school libraries were 28 million 677 thousand and 694 and after the end of the project, the number of books at school libraries increased to 56 million 247 thousand and 183.

 

The number of books in kindergarten libraries reached 740 thousand and 574, the number of books in primary school libraries exceeded 20 million and the number of books in high school increased to 16 million 819 thousand and 20.

 

The Ministry aims at increasing the number of books at school libraries to 100 million until the end of 2022.  

 

The number of books at school libraries continued to increase even after the end of the project.  The number of schools having more than 10 thousand books reached 163 and number of schools having more than 20 thousand books at their libraries increased to 19.

 

Within the context of the project, the Ministry also built libraries from recycled materials based on its zero waste policy at schools. First of the recycled libraries were established in Ağrı and the Ministry established 453 libraries in 81 cities of the country through recycling. Trabzon has the highest number of recycled libraries.

 

There are 5 million 383 thousand and 608 books in school libraries of İstanbul. Other cities that have the largest number of books in their school libraries are Bursa, Ankara, Antalya, Gaziantep and Konya.  

 

Minister of National Education Mahmut Özer said, "Decreasing opportunity differences among schools is one of our prior goals in providing equal opportunity in education. Within this context, we have completed the "No More Schools Without Libraries Project" within two months. We have established new libraries in 16,361 schools within a short period of time. The number of books at school libraries increased as an outcome of this project. The number of schools at school libraries increased by 100 percent and exceeded 56 million and now we are aiming at increasing the number of books to 100 million by the end of 2021."