While this year's guest of honour at the Frankfurt Book Fair - Catalonia - has proved controversial, next year's choice may also cause a few eyebrows to be raised.

Turkey revealed its plans for its stint as guest of honour 2008 at the fair today and announced a programme of cultural activities under the slogan "Turkey in all its colours". It will start in March next year at the Leipzig Book Fair and run through to Frankfurt in October.

In the last few years, the country has been at the centre of a controversy which has seen a number of high-profile writers, including the Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk, taken to court over claims that their work denigrates Turkey and Turkishness. However, in terms of its position between east and west, Turkey is expected to be a significant player in the book trade. Book production in the country is currently growing at a rate of 25% a year - 32,750 books were published there last year, up from 9,491 a decade before. The number of Turkish publishers has also doubled since 2000, now standing at more than 1,700.

At the handover ceremony on Sunday Elif Shafak, who last year was also prosecuted and acquitted for insulting Turkishness under article 301 of the country's penal code, will represent her country and give a reading.

The director of the Frankfurt Book Fair, Juergen Boos, said that it was a prerequisite for being in Frankfurt that free speech is allowed, and that the same would hold true for China, due to be guest of honour in 2009.

"We invite countries like Turkey and China where there are issues of freedom of speech, so that there is a platform to discuss it," he said. "All questions must be raised - we will not ban anything. The official delegation and publishers bring their own choice of writers with them, but they are aware that the whole world is looking at how they choose to represent themselves."

Spanish authors have boycotted this year's fair after Catalan organisers initially said that only those who wrote in Catalan could be part of the delegation, but then changed their minds following protests. Carlos Ruiz Zafon, the author of the international bestseller Shadow of the Wind, and Javier Cercas, author of the award-wining Soldiers of Salamis are among those who declined the belated invitation. The writers have accused nationalist politicians of hijacking the event.

Boos said that he was "disappointed" that the Spanish language authors did not come and that the discussion is "overshadowing" the Catalan's "wonderful" display.