Turkey: Celebrating Cin Ali: The stick figure who taught Turkey to read

Cin Ali

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 is a stubborn presence in popular culture. A television satire, Leyla and Mecnun, featured a skit in December in which the characters turned into Cin Ali-style cartoons. A Facebook page in his name lists 78,000 "likes."

"In hard times, I feel that he'll revive and come to my side. Like he'll come out from my childhood," writes Asli Gul on the social networking site. "He is the only guy who never tells lies," posts Kadir Oz.

Last year, Cin Ali became a pawn in allegations of result-fixing in the annual university entrance exam, a scandal that the political opposition used to hammer the government. Ali Demir, head of the examination institution, was the target of student protesters, some of whom held up signs saying: "Resign, Cin Ali."

Read more: Celebrating Cin Ali: The stick figure who taught Turkey to read - CSMonitor.com