Müfide İlhan

Müfide İlhan (1911, Mersin - 2 February 1996, Bodrum) was a mayor of Mersin, Turkey in the early 1950s. She is known as being the first woman mayor in Turkey.

Müfide was born on February 19, 1911. Her father was Mustafa Nazif, an army officer and her mother was Emine, a homemaker. She was only four years of age when her father Nafiz was killed at Conk Bayırı during the Gallipoli campaign in the World War I. After the war, Mersin was temporarily occupied by French army . So, she was sent to Ankara, where she completed her elementary education. After the liberation of İstanbul, she moved to İstanbul and completed her secondary education in the Kandilli highschool for girls. In 1928 she finished teachers' college. After finishing the college she began serving as a teacher in İstanbul

She married to Doctor Faruk İlhan. The couple worked in various Turkish cities. They also studied at Pestalozzi-Fröbel-Haus Institute in Berlin, Germany. In 1937, they returned home only to make one more foreign travel. This time their destination was Kabul, Afghanistan, where her husband, now a professor, had got an invitation to teach in the Medicine school of Kabul University. They travelled to Iraq, where they sailed from Basra to Karachi. In 1945 towards the end of World War II, the couple decided to return to Turkey. But because of war time hardships and unrest in Karachi, the couple was not able to sail back. So, they returned home by a car over Iran, which seemed impossible to many people in 1945. In Turkey, they decided to settle in Mersin in 1946, where she began to get interested in politics.

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