President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on Monday marked Turkey's National Library Week with a video telling the story of his childhood dream to have a library.

In the video, called "My First Book," Erdoğan tells how, as a young boy in Istanbul's Kasımpaşa district, he sold simits on the street to earn enough money to buy an eight-volume book.

He said it was his first childhood dream to have a library – and now, as president of Turkey, the books he bought as a boy still sit at the top of his collection.

"Dear children, please own books and have big dreams for this country," Erdoğan concludes the video by saying.

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