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He was only 11 years old.
He had an unfortunate accident on a cold day of February 1939.
His life was full of light when he entered the hospital;
when he was released, that light was gone.
In his own words, that was when he started his "blind flight".
It was people around him who were blind however, not him.
They believed that he cannot achieve anything without his vision,
so he was forced to drop out of school.
Although he embraced his blindness,
he refused to live without a purpose.
He started to learn the English language.
With the support of private instructors, he learnt the English language using the Braille alphabet.
While attending the English language school offered by the British Council,
he met the head of British Council of Turkey,
who gave him a bag full of books, as a present.
These books were sent from London, UK.
That was the first time Gultekin Yazgan was introduced Braille books.
That was when he started envisioning founding the first library
for the blind in Turkey.
These books have changed his life.
He graduated from high school and started to attend
the Faculty of Law at University of Ankara.
As a student at Ankara University, he founded the Six Dots Association
for the Blind with the goal of helping visually impaired persons in their studies.
He graduated from university in 1952
and started working as a Social Sciences
and English teacher in the Ankara School for the Blind
while working as an intern lawyer.
After successfully working as a teacher for 20 years,
Gultekin Yazgan retired from this profession.
He did not retire from life, however.
He kept on working as an independent laywer
while preparing Braille books for children. 5 years ago,
he realized that it was time to set up the Library for the Visually Impaired.
He was 77 years old when he established the library
with the help of 16 of his friends.
But his ideals were not entirely fulfilled yet.
- I dreamed about a library for the visually impaired for many years.
It was my dream waiting to be realized for a long time.
I worked to realize it for many years.
Being blind is not so bad after all!
This is not a typical library.
People do not read books in silence here;
on the contrary this library is ruled by sound and hardworking individuals.
In this library, they prepare magazines and read books
and prepare audio CDs for the visually impaired,
and these materials get sent to their addresses free of charge.
There are 65.000 audio books in their archives at the moment.
In the other section of the library,
volunteers are preparing Braille books and magazines.
The Library has been publishing
2 monthly magazines since 2004.
Since then, "Friend" and "Honeybee" magazines were mailed
to 105.000 visually impaired persons free of charge.
Today, the library they have set up with the help
of 16 friends of theirs serves around 3.000 people.
Run entirely by hardworking volunteers,
this library enlightens the world of these visually impaired persons.
We want to publish more magazines.
Our library, the Library for the Visually Impaired, does not only
consist of a pile of books. We are a library that produces books and CDs
and sends these materials to all across Turkey and the world.
We want to set up a material borrowing system.
We want readers to borrow books
available in our library for a certain amount of time.
We did not achieve this yet, however.
Gultekin Yazgan was never left in the dark
in his "blind flight" he started when he was 11.
He believed that it was only his vision
that were darkened, not his life in general.
Instead of giving up on life, he embraced his blindness
and started a struggle. He made a huge difference in the lives
of visually impaired persons of his generation
and of many generations to come.