Hitler’s ‘Mein Kampf’ has sold over 50,000 copies in Turkey so far this year:
Cheap cover prices and a rise in nationalist sentiment have made an unlikely best-seller in Turkey of Adolf Hitler’s infamous autobiography, “Mein Kampf.” The book was first published in Turkey in 1939, when Axis and Allied countries were competing for Turkey’s soul as they tried to woo it away from the neutrality it would maintain until the very end of World War II.
But since January, the book has sold more than 50,000 copies and is number four on the best-seller list drawn up by the D&R bookstore chain.
“‘Mein Kampf’ has always been a sleeper, a secret best-seller,” said Oguz Tektas of Mefisto editions, one of several publishing houses to re-release the book Hitler wrote while in jail in 1925. “We took it out of the closet for purely commercial reasons.” His company’s sole aim, he stressed, was “to make money,” which they did by slashing the cover price.
“Mein Kampf,” published by about a dozen companies over the years, always sold at a fairly steady annual rate of about 20,000 copies at some 20 New Turkish Lira ($15) a copy. […]
“This book, which does not contain a single ounce of humanity, unfortunately appears to be taken seriously in this country,” political scientist Dogu Ergil complained in a recent newspaper interview.
He agreed that the unexpected popularity of “Mein Kampf” in this Muslim-majority country has its roots in a rise in anti-American sentiment sparked by the occupation of Iraq and anti-Semitism resulting from Israel’s Palestinian policy.
“Nazism, buried in the dustbin of history in Europe, is beginning to re-emerge in Turkey,” he warned.
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