By Christopher Torchia and Emrah Betos
Associated Press
ISTANBUL—If you mess up in Turkey, a common way to laugh it off is to invoke Cin Ali, the squiggly stick figure in a cap whose benign adventures in picture books helped a generation of Turks learn to read.
Cin Ali, a village character who was created around 1970, is out of sorts in Turkey’s brash new world, epitomized by the perpetual buzz of Istanbul, its continent-straddling biggest city. Today, as he’s eclipsed by more flamboyant cartoon characters, a few ardent fans are working industriously to revive this faded icon, who helped steer the early consciousness of many Turks who describe him wistfully as a cute, childhood companion.
“I couldn’t even draw Cin Ali,” goes the self-deprecating idiom, embedded in adult lexicon long after the cartoon boy was officially sidelined from state classrooms nearly a decade ago as an antiquated teaching tool. Today’s Turkey barrels ahead, buoyed by economic growth that has so far weathered the worst of the crisis in Europe, its chief trading partner, and intent on pioneering political change in the Middle East.
via Turkey struggles to preserve childhood cartoon – Boston.com.
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