Petronella's Voyages: Dinner and Darüşşafaka

Last night was a bit of a special one. Dinner for eight at our favourite tapas bar, La Bulla. Here we are off the African coast with six friends all with a link back to Turkey. Us, Dilek and her husband Ali who has flown out from Istanbul to be with his intrepid wife, Jack and Fizzy (who we first met in Turkey) on their last meal out before setting off across the Atlantic, and Turkish couple Cengiz and Nili from yacht Vega. The food as usual was fantastic and the company pretty inspirational but it was one particular conversation that stuck in my mind.

We knew that Dilek was sponsoring girls' education in Turkey through a charity called Darüşşafaka but not much more than that. It turns out that Darüşşafaka is one of the oldest charities and educational foundations in Turkey, founded I think in 1863. Turkey was then an integral part of the Ottoman Empire. The aim of the foundation was and still is to give orphans a good educational start in life. Later during the First World War its intake took orphans from the Turkish conflicts with britain at Canakkale and Gallipoli. Although things have changed now, at that time and considerably later, orphans were defined as children who had lost their fathers, as mothers would be unable to support their children on their own. 80% of the teaching was in English, education was top class and the foundation was well regarded by the new regime installed by Ataturk in 1923.

It was about this time in the evening that we discovered that Cengis, sitting opposite me, was one of these very orphans! By the time he was accepted, competition for places was very fierce and the year he gained entry he was one of only 53 pupils to gain a place. Fail one exam during schooling and you were out. No re-sits, no second chances. Only 36 students made it to completion. Nowadays the entry exams attract around 10,000 applicants for just 100 places each year. Eventually girls were admitted and that is where Dilek comes back into the story.

Her aim is to raise funds for Darüşşafaka by way of her solo trans Atlantic crossing which will be the first for a Turkish woman. Darüşşafaka Foundation has committed to increase the number of entrants they admit by the number of girls that Dilek raises sponsorship for! £25,000 will support one girl from aged 11 to completion of their university education. Her aim is to raise sufficient money to support 10 girls. Companies and individuals throughout Turkey are sponsoring the initiative and she is famous in the Turkish media by way of television interviews and newspaper articles. In fact even before Cengis and Nili had even met them Nili was a social media friend of Dilek's.

What the future holds for Darüşşafaka is less certain. The current government in Turkey seems to be pushing for an increasingly Islamic education system. An independent, free-thinking, western-oriented foundation such as Darüşşafaka is likely to have a difficult time ahead of it I fear.