Gülsen Bozkurt

Gülsen Bozkurt (born 28 September 1950 ) is a Turkish Cypriot doctor and politician. She served as a member of the parliament between 1993 and 2003 and as the Minister of Health and the Environment between 1999 and 2001. She was one of the first Turkish Cypriot women in politics and the second female minister after Onur Borman. These included the introduction of prenatal screening through fetal blood tests in 1984 and the implementation of DNA techniques through chorionic villus sampling in 1991.

Meanwhile, Bozkurt continued her further study and work in Britain in 1986–87 on thalassaemia and leukaemia. She further worked on molecular biology in 1993 in the United States.

This was a time when female participation in Turkish Cypriot politics was a recent phenomenon and she was one of the three female MPs in the parliament, along with Onur Borman of the National Unity Party and Ruhsan Tuğyan of the Democratic Party. She collaborated with to facilitate the passing of the Family Law. In her first term, she served at the Committee for Administrative and Social Matters and prepared a law allowing three months of maternity leave, which was vehemently opposed and rejected.

On 18 July 2003, Bozkurt resigned from the TKP and joined the newly established Peace and Democracy Movement (BDH). She ran again in the 2003 general election for the BDH but failed to be re-elected.

In the local elections of 2010, Bozkurt ran for the mayoralty of the Nicosia Turkish Municipality. Her campaign was centred on increasing green spaces in Nicosia. In retrospect in 2012, she said that she knew she had no chances of winning but ran anyway to demonstrate her vision for the city and be example for the youth as women rarely run for mayoralty in Northern Cyprus. She lost the election to Cemal Metin Bulutoğluları and came third with 1382 votes, amounting to 7.03%.

She defines herself as a social democrat.

Personal life Since 16 August 1975, she has been married to Özkan Bozkurt, with whom she met at university, where he was studying engineering. She has two children, her daughter Umut (born on 10 July 1976) and her son Doğuş (born on 19 May 1981).

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