![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/07\/turkansaylan.jpg\")
“You, my dear daughter”, reads a letter addressed to Turkey’s\u00a0girls from dermatologist Turkan Saylan, “Stop asking yourself,\u00a0\u2018Why am I born a girl?’ and aim at becoming the best you can\u00a0be.” The letter, which was read at Saylan’s funeral in Istanbul,\u00a0conveyed a message close to the heart of this woman whose\u00a0life was devoted to medicine and social activism.<\/p>\n
Saylan was one of the fi rst female dermatologists in Turkey,\u00a0and a leading fi gure in the fi ght against leprosy. In 1976, she\u00a0founded the country’s Turkish Leprosy Relief Association.\u00a0Later, she helped found the International Leprosy Union\u00a0and served as a consultant to WHO on the disease. But she\u00a0will perhaps be best remembered for her women’s rights\u00a0activism, and for her eff orts to bring education to girls living\u00a0in the impoverished Turkish countryside.<\/p>\n
In 1989, she helped found the Association to Support\u00a0Contemporary Life (CYDD), a non-governmental organisation
\n(NGO) that works to place young girls in school.<\/p>\n
CYDD was inspired by the years Saylan spent working in\u00a0rural Turkey, where girls, for cultural and fi nancial reasons,
\nare often left behind at home when their brothers go to\u00a0school. CYDD has built schools in rural areas and awarded
\nscholarships to young girls. “The aim of this NGO is to protect\u00a0and advance Ataturk’s Turkish Republic and secularism”,
\nFiliz Mericli, the new head of the organisation, told The\u00a0Lancet “She [Saylan] thought the only way to make this come
\nalive was to make all children have the same opportunities\u00a0to have an education.” Despite Saylan’s death, this work will
\ncontinue. “Of course she is a great loss, not only for CYDD,\u00a0but also for Turkey and even for the world”, Mericli said, “But\u00a0she has shown us the way to make her dreams come true.”<\/p>\n
An uncompromising secularist and a fi rm believer in the\u00a0principles of Kemal Ataturk, Saylan’s life was controversial
\nuntil the end. Along with other members of CYDD, she was\u00a0recently placed on a watch list compiled by public prosecutors\u00a0looking into allegations of a planned military coup against\u00a0the Islamic Justice and Development Government. Weeks\u00a0before her death, police raided her home and office\u00a0and confi scated private and professional documents.<\/p>\n
Condemning the raid on state television, a terminally ill but\u00a0defi ant Saylan said: “We want democracy and contemporary\u00a0values to rule. Therefore, we are ready to fi ght for this cause\u00a0as long as it takes.” She said she favoured neither a coup nor\u00a0the introduction of Sharia, the Islamic legal code.<\/p>\n
People who knew her are full of praise. “Dr Saylan was\u00a0one of the most active, energetic, positive, humble persons\u00a0who managed to accomplish lifetimes of work in a single\u00a0life,” said Filiz Odabas-Geldiay, vice-president of the Ataturk
\nSociety of America, an NGO that aims to promote Ataturk’s\u00a0legacy. Saylan was awarded the organisation’s Ataturk
\nAward in Education and Modernisation in 2001. But Saylan\u00a0was known as a modest person who disliked all the praise she\u00a0received. “I very much dislike people who praise me saying\u00a0\u2018if only we had ten more people like you, Turkey would have\u00a0been so much more advanced by now’.” Saylan told Voice\u00a0of Ataturk, a publication of the Ataturk Society of America,\u00a0a few years before her death. “My response to them is \u2018why\u00a0aren’t you one of those people yourself? Stop praising me\u00a0and be the kind of person you want to see’.”<\/p>\n
Saylan graduated from the Faculty of Medicine of\u00a0Istanbul University in 1963 with a specialisation in venereal
\ndiseases and dermatology. After further studies in the UK,\u00a0she taught at Istanbul University, becoming a professor in
\n1977. She was the head of Istanbul Leprosy Hospital for\u00a021 years between 1981 and 2002, when she retired.<\/p>\n
Saylan received several international awards, including\u00a0the International Gandhi Prize in 1986. She published seven
\nbooks in Turkey, including the autobiographical The Sun\u00a0Rises Now Out of Hope. Here, Saylan gives intimate details
\nfrom her career and private life. It was a spectacular life, but\u00a0also one plagued by health problems. As a medical student,\u00a0she spent 13 months lying face down in bed to recover from\u00a0spinal tuberculosis and she was diagnosed with breast cancer\u00a019 years ago. By 2002, the cancer had spread to her liver.<\/p>\n
Saylan is survived by two sons, Cinar Orge, a physician, and\u00a0Caglayan Orge, a graphic designer, and two grandchildren.
\nShe married twice, to Mustafa Orge and Cevdet Bilgin, but\u00a0remained single for the last years of her life.<\/p>\n
Kristin Solberg
\nkristinelisabethsolberg@gmail.com<\/p>\n
Source :\u00a0www.thelancet.com Vol 374 July 4, 2009<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Dermatologist, founder of Turkish Leprosy\u00a0Relief Association, and women’s rights activist. Born on Dec 13, 1935, in Istanbul, Turkey, she\u00a0died of liver cancer on May 18, 2009, in\u00a0Istanbul, aged 73 years. “You, my dear daughter”, reads a letter addressed to Turkey’s\u00a0girls from dermatologist Turkan Saylan, “Stop asking yourself,\u00a0\u2018Why am I born a girl?’ and aim at […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":83,"featured_media":13812,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[845],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13811","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-scitech"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13811","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/83"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13811"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13811\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13812"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13811"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13811"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13811"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}