A gun show has been hosted by a Turkish university, Karadeniz Technical University, in Trabzon, Turkey. The show where different kinds of guns and weapons are exhibited is held under an event called "Defense Industry Days".
While the place of the exhibition is on the university campus, in the university’s convention centre, secondary and high school students were brought to visit the exhibition and given detailed information about using the guns exhibited.
Although it is known that violence has become more common in Turkish schools, the school director and political authorities seem to be not hesitated from holding a gun show in a university and bringing school children to visit the show. According to the data gathered by an anti-gun organization in 2016 in Turkey, there were at least 20 millions of privately owned weapons in Turkey, 85 percent of which are unregistered. This means that one out of every four people carries arms, within 80 million inhabitants of the country.
Furthermore, it is also reported that the number of registered and unregistered individually owned weapons increased 10 folds within the last 10 years. In the first six months of 2016, Turkey jumped from No. 25 to No. 8 among the top countries buying weapons from Germany, according to a report prepared for the German Council of Ministers. Reports also indicate that the number of armed attacks increased by 28% in 2017 compared to the previous year and by 61% in the last 3 years.
The July 15 coup attempt in 2016 also increased the controversial debates over individual armament since the government officials made statements advocating for providing citizens with gun licences and weapons in order to "prevent coups".
