Besim Ömer Akalın

Content sourced from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

Besim Ömer Akalın (1862–1940) was a Turkish physician, politician, and a pioneer of modern obstetrics and gynecology in Turkey. He led the Turkish Red Crescent and helped establish nursing as a separate, teachable profession. Born in Constantinople, he trained across the Ottoman Empire and in Paris, where he specialized in medicine in 1891. He wrote Doğum Tarihi, the first modern Turkish book on birth.

In 1892 he secretly opened Turkey’s first birth clinic near the Medical College, and it operated for 17 years. He became chief physician in 1899 and taught midwifery, publishing early works such as Doğurduktan Sonra, Ebe Hanımlara Öğütler, and Ebelik. After the 1908 revolution his rank was reduced, but he continued his reform work, promoting women’s education in medicine. In 1911 he trained daughters of prominent families as volunteer nurses, enabling them to help care for wounded soldiers. During WWI, he organized nursery training for hundreds of nurses.

Akalın served as director general of the Turkish Red Crescent and helped found the TB Association (1918) and the Child Welfare Association (1921). In 1919 he became rector of Darülfünun (Istanbul University). He paved the way for Turkish women to become physicians, with women enrolling at the Imperial Medical College in 1922 and six graduates by 1928. He authored more than forty medical works. He took the surname Akalın in 1934 and was elected to the Turkish parliament in 1935 and 1939 as a Republican People’s Party deputy from Bilecik. He died in Ankara on 19 March 1940.