Sabiha Gökçen

Sabiha Gökçen (22 March 1913 – 22 March 2001) was a Turkish aviator.

During her flight career, she flew around 8,000 hours and participated in 32 different military operations.

She was the world's first female fighter pilot, aged 23.

As an orphan, she was one of the nine children adopted by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk.

She is recognized as the first female combat pilot by The Guinness Book of World Records (in fact she was the first female fighter pilot, as the first female combat pilot was Marie Marvingt in 1915 ) and was selected as the only female pilot for the poster of "The 20 Greatest Aviators in History" published by the United States Air Force in 1996.

Sabiha Gökçen Airport, the second airport in Istanbul, is named after her.

According to official Turkish sources and interviews with Sabiha Gökçen, she was the daughter of Mustafa Izzet Bey and Hayriye Hanım, both of whom were of Bosniak ancestry.

During Atatürk's visit to Bursa in 1925, Sabiha, who was only twelve years old, asked for permission to talk with Atatürk and expressed her wish to study at a boarding school.

After hearing her story and about her miserable living conditions, Atatürk decided to adopt her and asked her brother for permission to take her to the Çankaya Presidential Residence in Ankara, where Sabiha would live with Atatürk's other adoptive daughters, Zehra, Afet and Rukiye.

Gökçen attended the Çankaya Primary School in Ankara and the Üsküdar American Academy in Istanbul.

Atatürk attached great importance to aviation and for that purpose oversaw the foundation of the Turkish Aeronautical Association in 1925.

After the introduction of the Surname Law, Atatürk gave her the family name Gökçen on 19 December 1934.

'Gök' means sky in Turkish and Gökçen means 'belonging or relating to the sky'.

However, she was not an aviator at that time, and it was only six months later that Sabiha developed a passion for flying.

He took Sabiha along with him to the opening ceremony of Türkkuşu (Turkish Bird) Flight School on 5 May 1935.

During the airshow of gliders and parachutists invited from foreign countries, she got very excited.

As Atatürk asked her whether she would also want to become a skydiver, she nodded, "yes indeed, I am ready right now".

Atatürk instructed Fuat Bulca, the head of the school, to enroll her as the first female trainee.

She was meant to become a skydiver, but she was much more interested in flying, so she earned her pilot's licence.

Gökçen, together with seven male students, was sent to Crimea, Soviet Union for an advanced course in glider and powered aircraft piloting.

However, when she was in Moscow, she learned the news that her sister Zehra had died, and with collapsed morale, she immediately returned to Turkey, isolating herself from social activities for some time.

After a while, at Atatürk's insistence, Gökçen began working again.

At Eskişehir Aviation School, she received special flight training from Savmi Uçan and Muhittin Bey.

She began flying a motorized aircraft for the first time on February 25, 1936.

Gökçen, due to the success in flight training, Ataturk himself said: "You've made me very happy ... Now I can explain what I have planned for you ... Perhaps you'll be the first woman military pilot in the world ... For the world's first military woman pilot to be of Turkish descent would be a proud event, you can imagine, right? Now I will act immediately and send you to Tayyare School in Eskişehir. You will receive a special education there"''.

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As girls were not being accepted by the Turkish War Academies in those years, Gökçen was provided, on Atatürk's orders, with a personalized uniform, and attended a special education programme of eleven months at the Tayyare Mektebi (Aviation School) in Eskişehir in the academic year 1936-1937.

After receiving her flight patents (diploma) she trained to become a war pilot at the 1st Airplane Regiment in Eskişehir for six months.

She improved her skills by flying bomber and fighter planes at the 1st Aircraft Regiment in Eskişehir Airbase and gained experience after participating in the Aegean and Thrace exercises in 1937.

In that same year, she took part in military operations during the Dersim rebellion and became the first Turkish female air force combat pilot.

Turkish planes flew numerous sorties against the rebels during the rebellion.

A report of the General Staff mentioned the "serious damage" that had been caused by her 50 kg bomb upon a group of rebels.

Nuri Dersimi claimed that the Turkish air force bombed the district with poisonous gas in 1938.

In an interview she gave to Halit Kıvanç in 1956, Sabiha Gökçen stated: "They gave us the order 'Shoot every living thing you see', we were firebombing even the goats which were the food of the rebels".

In February 2004 an article in the newspaper Agos, headlined "The Secret of Sabiha Hatun", contained an interview with Hripsime Sebilciyan, a former resident of Gaziantep, who claimed to be Gökçen's niece and that Gökçen herself was of Armenian ancestry.

Sebilciyan claimed that Gökçen's birth name was Hatun Sebilciyan and that she was adopted by Atatürk from an orphanage in Cibin in Urfa Province.

Sebilcyan said that Gökçen had four brothers: Sarkis, Boğos, Haçik and Hovhannes, and a sister, Diruhi (Hripsime's mother).

According to Turkish-Armenian linguist Pars Tuğlacı, who knew Gökçen personally and deemed Sebilciyan's story to be false, Gökçen was born to an Armenian family from Bursa and was left in an orphanage there when her family was deported during the Armenian genocide.

Tuğlacı also claimed that Gökçen later found out about her Armenian roots when members of her family contacted her from Beirut and that she visited her Armenian relatives there.

However, these claims are disputed by Turkish sources and interviews with Gökçen, as well as by her adopted sister Ülkü Adatepe, who reiterated that Gökçen and both of Sabiha's parents were of Bosniak ancestry.