Turkey’s first female minister Türkan Akyol dies aged 89

ANKARA

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Türkan Akyol, who was the country’s first female minister and university rector, died in the capital Ankara on Sept. 7. She was 89.

Professor Akyol, an academic and politician, had been receiving treatment at Hacettepe University Hospital for a while.

Akyol will be laid to rest in the Karşıyaka Cemetery in Ankara on Sept. 8.

Health Minister Ahmet Demircan extended his condolences to Akyol’s relatives, stating she had significant service to the country as both a politician and an academic and made a contribution to the study of tuberculosis.

Born in 1928 in Istanbul, Akyol studied at Ankara University’s Faculty of Medicine after graduating from the Erenköy Girl’s College. She graduated from Ankara University in 1953 and began working there as an assistant. She became a pulmonologist three years later. Akyol continued her medical education at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York between 1959 and 1962.

In 1964, she became an associate professor at Ankara University’s Department of Pulmonology and became a professor five years later.

Akyol was appointed as the country’s first female health minister in 1971. However, she resigned from the government along with 10 other ministers who had been appointed outside the parliament and returned to her university.

She became the country’s first elected female rector at Ankara University in 1980.

Akyol re-entered the parliament from the Social Democratic People’s Party (SHP) at the 18th term and again acted as the state minister responsible for female and children in 1993.