Read Rousseau, Plato and Dawkins? This Turkish boy has and he's 10

Atakan Kayalar says he has read 250 books during the past five months and wants to help improve education systems.

Atakan Kayalar plays chess in Istanbul, Turkey on February 19, 2020.
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Atakan Kayalar plays chess in Istanbul, Turkey on February 19, 2020.

Turkish secondary school student Atakan Kayalar went viral on Twitter after someone posted a video of him as he discussed reading hundreds of books, mostly on philosophy.

In the video, which was shot in a bookstore, Atakan proudly says he has read Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s The Social Contract, Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion and Plato’s Republic.

The video soon went viral on Twitter and some people commented on how they were impressed with Atakan, while others were more critical as they thought these books were not “for children”.

It has been shared more than 80,000 times.

‘I want to be a psychiatrist’

Atakan told reporters after a chess course he attended that he wants to be a psychiatrist someday. 

“But I have another goal besides my vocational ambitions: To be president.”

He said he thinks the country’s education system should be changed but declined to elaborate.

“People need to be educated about respect and good manners starting from pre-school. The [bad] examples are right in front of our eyes.”

Atakan’s mother Hulya Kayalar said she wants her child to get an education “without being separated from his friends. I have no materialistic expectations”.

His father is currently unemployed, and his mother said as Atakan spends most of his time in bookstores, their only problem is finding the money to pay for his books.

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