Turkan Saylan was a true daughter of modern Turkey. From 1976, she worked tirelessly to eradicate leprosy in her homeland and combat childhood illiteracy, particularly in the least developed region of Anatolia. A champion of women's rights, she did not let recurrent breast cancer inhibit her determination to fulfil what she saw as her civic duty to better the lives of her fellow citizens. A staunch secularist, a week ago she led a protest in Samsun on the Black Sea against the decision of Turkey's ruling, Islamist-rooted AK Party to call early elections to conclude a political altercation sparked by its nomination of a presidential candidate, which was seen by the demonstrators as key to the AK Party's Islamist agenda to undermine the secular nature of the Turkish republic.
To the dismay of her supporters, in the days leading up to her death, Saylan's house and the premises of the Association to Support Contemporary Life (ÇYDD) - one of Turkey's largest non-governmental organisations, of which she was president - were searched by authorities following allegations that she was a member of the ultranationalist organisation Ergenekon that had purportedly planned to overthrow the Islamist government earlier this decade.
Born in 1935 in Istanbul, Saylan graduated from the Faculty of Medicine of Istanbul University in 1963. Over the next four years, she specialised in venereal diseases and dermatology in the Hospital of the Social Security Institution. She spent 13 months of those four years studying face down in bed recovering from spinal tuberculosis. In 1972, she was appointed associate professor, and professor in 1977 at Istanbul University, where she remained until retiring in 2002.
Her decision to focus on leprosy during the mid-1960s took her to some of the poorest regions of rural Turkey, where she was shocked to discover high rates of illiteracy among women. In 1989, she established ÇYDD with several colleagues to help address this considerable shortfall in education. Founder of the Turkish Leprosy Relief Association, consultant to the World Health Organisation on leprosy and a founding member of the International Leprosy Union, she published numerous articles in both English and Turkish in the fields of medicine, education and women's issues, as well as two autobiographical books.
Turkan Saylan was born on Dec 13 1935, and died on May 18. She is survived by two sons. * The National
