*In memory of Professor Türkan Akyol *
Her life story is a long line of successes: from a resident of pulmonary disease to the first women rector and the first women minister of Health in Turkey.
Prof. Dr. Türkan Akyol was an academician in the field of pulmonology in Turkey, she was the first women rector of Ankara University. She was one of the country’s most important women politicians and the first female minister of Health. She died on 7 September, 2017 in Ankara at the age of 89. We would like to share her impressive professional and political life, because she was a very charismatic and academic political figure in Turkey.
She was born on 12 October, 1928 in Istanbul, Turkey. During her primary and secondary education, she studied in many different schools, in various locations across the whole of Anatolia, along with her family – her father was an army officer. She graduated from Erenköy Girls’ Lycee in Istanbul, and began her medical education in Ankara University Medical School, from which she graduated as a medical doctor in 1953. She completed her residency in the Chest Diseases and Pulmonology department of the same school, where she also furthered her academic career and became a professor. She had short term fellowships in France and Holland, and studied at the Albert Einstein Medical School in New York, from 1959 to 1962, focusing on chest physiology.
Besides her academic and educational activities at university, Prof. Akyol also became a pioneering political figure in her country. In 1971, she became the first ever female minister of the Turkish republic. She resigned from her post in 1972. In 1980, she was elected president of Ankara University – the first female university president in Turkey. After the military coup of that year, she had to resign from her position as president of the University. She re-entered the political struggle and became a charter member of the Social Democrat Party (1983); she became a member of parliament at the 1987 elections, and for the second time became a minister (for women’s affairs ) in the 1992 cabinet. She also served as World Health Organisation European Area honorary member, and Deputy Chair of the Women’s Branch of the Socialist International.
She was married to Prof. Dr. Turhan Akyol and was the mother of two sons.
–Elif Sen, Oner Dikensor and Fuat Kalyoncu, on behalf of Turkish Thoracic Society
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