December 13, 2016
Türkan Saylan’s 81st Birthday
“You, my dear daughter, stop asking yourself, ‘Why am I born a girl?’ and aim at becoming the best you can be.”
Türkan Saylan, one of Turkey’s first female dermatologists and a champion of women’s rights, wrote these words to the young girls of her native country. The message, which was part of a book she authored, perfectly describes her approach to life.
As a young doctor in the 1970s, Saylan played a lead role in the battle against leprosy. She helped to found both the Turkish Leprosy Relief Association and the International Leprosy Union. She also served as a consultant on the disease for the World Health Organization. Later, she shifted her focus to another cause: bringing education to impoverished young girls. And in 1989, she helped start the Association to Support Contemporary Life, an organization that has built hundreds of schools in rural areas and awarded more than 60,000 scholarships.
Showing Saylan in her lab coat with several young girls in tow, today’s Doodle pays tribute to her incredible life’s work on what would’ve been her 81st birthday.
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