Fatma Betül Sayan Kaya

Fatma Betül Sayan Kaya (born 31 January 1981) is a Turkish electrical and electronics engineer, physician and politician of the Justice and Development Party (AKP). She was born in Istanbul's Fatih district, the third child of a lawyer family; the parliamentary biography names her parents as Ramazan and Hatice Sayan. She served two terms as an Istanbul member of the Grand National Assembly of Turkey, was minister of family and social policies in the 65th cabinet, and remained a senior AKP official until she gave up her party posts in September 2026 during an investment-fund investigation.

The Assembly's biography records an honours degree in electrical and electronics engineering from Bilkent University, a master's degree at New York University on thermal imaging of breast cancer, and a medical degree from the Cerrahpaşa Faculty of Medicine of Istanbul University. BBC Türkçe describes the New York work as graduate study at NYU-Poly, the polytechnic that later became the university's Tandon School of Engineering. The same parliamentary note says she speaks English and German at a high level and is married with two children.

She was elected to the AKP's Istanbul provincial board in 2009 and advised party leader Recep Tayyip Erdoğan from 2010 to 2012. On 13 September 2015 she became a deputy chair responsible for research and development, and from 25 November 2015 a deputy chair for foreign affairs. Voters sent her to parliament for Istanbul on 1 November 2015 and again on 24 June 2018. On 24 May 2016, in the cabinet announced under Prime Minister Binali Yıldırım, she was appointed minister of family and social policies and was described as that government's only woman minister; she held the portfolio through 2018.

In March 2017, while Turkish ministers were campaigning abroad for the 16 April constitutional referendum, the Netherlands withdrew landing rights from Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu and barred Sayan Kaya from the Turkish consulate in Rotterdam after she arrived by road from Germany. Prime Minister Mark Rutte called the visit irresponsible. After a standoff of about four hours she was escorted to the German border, and police dispersed a crowd outside the consulate with water cannon and mounted officers. In May 2017 she dropped a legal challenge; Dutch reporting said she had left before an order declaring her an undesirable alien was enforced.

On 26 September 2026, after Yeni Parti spokesman Zeynel Emre alleged that she and her husband, İlyas Kaya, had sold large holdings in the shipbuilder Özata Denizcilik just before a funds crisis hit the market, she asked Erdoğan to release her from her party offices so the claims could be clarified. Spokesman Ömer Çelik said the resignation from the central executive and central decision boards had been accepted, and he invoked the presumption of innocence. Two days later the Istanbul Chief Public Prosecutor's Office said institutions had been told to freeze all assets of both spouses as part of the funds investigation run by its bureau for terrorism financing and money-laundering offences. Opposition figures gave euro totals for the trades; those figures were not published by the authorities.

Early life and education

Family and schooling

Fatma Betül Sayan Kaya was born on 31 January 1981 in Istanbul. Anadolu Agency places the birth in the district of Fatih and describes her as the third child of a family of lawyers. The biography carried by the Grand National Assembly of Turkey names her parents as Ramazan Sayan and Hatice Sayan. At the May 2016 ceremony at which she took office as minister, Hürriyet identified her father as a lawyer and her mother, also a lawyer, as someone known for work in the women’s branches of the Justice and Development Party.

She attended Fatih Primary School and then Beyoğlu Anatolian High School (Beyoğlu Anadolu Lisesi) in Beyoğlu. Anadolu Agency still glosses the lycée, in parentheses, as the English High School. The Ministry of National Education records that the school used the name English High School until it was nationalized on 1 November 1979 as the English Girls’ Middle School, and that it became Beyoğlu Anatolian High School in 1980, when a lycée section opened; the ministry lists it as an Anatolian high school. The Assembly biography states that she speaks English and German at a high level.

Engineering degree

Anadolu Agency reported that a high result in the university entrance examinations brought her a scholarship in electrical and electronics engineering at Bilkent University, and that she graduated with honors (şeref derecesi). The parliamentary biography gives the same department and the same honors, and it does not state a year of graduation. BBC Türkçe likewise identifies the Bilkent qualification as electrical and electronics engineering.

On 28 February 2018 she spoke at Istanbul University on a panel titled “28 February: Anatomy of a Postmodern Coup,” about the 1997 military memorandum and the university headscarf restrictions associated with it. She said that, as a lycée student, she had wanted to become a physician and believed she was a strong enough candidate for Istanbul Faculty of Medicine, but that she would not be able to study there while wearing a headscarf. She said she chose Bilkent because covered students could enroll there, and that she did so in order not to compromise her religious practice. She also said that an older sister had been among the students removed from Istanbul University’s electrical and electronics faculty over the headscarf.

Graduate research and medical training

Anadolu Agency’s cabinet profile says that, after working for a time in Istanbul as a project engineer, she undertook graduate study at New York University. The Assembly biography states that this was a master’s degree on the thermal imaging of breast cancer. BBC Türkçe places the work at NYU-Poly, the Polytechnic Institute of New York University, and describes it as graduate study on imaging breast cancer rather than as a completed doctorate. Deutsche Welle reports a master’s at New York University on thermal imaging of breast cancer, followed by the Cerrahpaşa medical course.

At the 2018 panel she said she had gone to the United States for master’s and doctoral study, that the graduate research was in a field close to medicine, and that while she was abroad she decided she still wanted to be a physician. She said she later graduated from Istanbul University’s Cerrahpaşa Faculty of Medicine, which she presented as the plan she had deferred under the headscarf restrictions. The Assembly lists her as a physician (tıp doktoru) who finished Cerrahpaşa, as well as an electrical and electronics engineer. It gives no year for the New York work or for the medical degree. Contemporary profiles were less reserved: in May 2016 Hürriyet wrote that she had completed a doctorate in biomedical engineering at New York University, and CNN Türk, in a résumé published for the same appointment, said she had won a doctoral scholarship in biomedical engineering, worked on thermal imaging of breast cancer, returned to Turkey in 2009 and then begun medical school at Cerrahpaşa. Those claims of doctoral study go beyond the Assembly text, which records a master’s.

Engineering work and entry into the AKP

Project engineering

Résumé-based profiles are the public account of private-sector engineering before graduate study: Milliyet says she began as a project specialist at Satürn Mühendislik in Istanbul, and Sözcü says she worked for a time in the city as a project engineer before study in New York. The biography of the Grand National Assembly of Turkey records the honors degree in electrical and electronics engineering from Bilkent University and the New York master's, but no employer.

The post that later entered an official file was at İSBAK A.Ş. (İstanbul Bilişim ve Akıllı Kent Teknolojileri), a subsidiary of the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality. Cumhuriyet's account of inspection report İBB-296/11, dated 30 November 2021 and signed by chief inspector Abbas Yaşar, says that on 14 November 2008 she was hired — under the name Fatma Betül Sayan Boyacı — as an electrical and electronics engineer. The same day İSBAK approved a scholarship and signed an overseas-education contract for a master's at NYU-Polytechnic University in New York, where she had already been accepted. The Assembly biography states that she completed a master's at New York University on the thermal imaging of breast cancer. Deutsche Welle, drawing on the report, says she left for the United States on 12 January 2009 and that İSBAK paid her 85,791 dollars and 20,289 lira.

On 1 April 2010 she asked for unpaid leave for "private reasons" until 21 May, then wrote that difficulties and ill health had stopped the program. An addendum that day suspended her employment contract for a year and extended the education contract by a year. Inspectors said the original terms waived repayment only on a health-board finding of death or of illness preventing study, which her papers were not. Social-security entries in the report show rehiring on 14 November 2011, a resignation dated 1 April 2015, and departure on 20 April 2015.

The report also found that the contract did not follow an İSBAK board decision on overseas scholarships, and that a clause barring paid or unpaid outside work, and consultancy, during the compulsory-service period conflicted with posts on her own website: the Istanbul provincial board from 2009 and an advisership to Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in 2010–2012. On 6 December 2021 the municipality asked prosecutors to proceed against 13 former officials, including then board chair Ali Karahan, and sought repayment with costs and legal interest from Sayan Kaya and relatives who had guaranteed the contract. Deutsche Welle reported that the files later ended in decisions not to prosecute, and that in 2024 the Istanbul Anadolu 9th criminal judgeship of peace blocked access to coverage at 71 web addresses; when the documents appeared, she wrote that corruption and bribery were "the CHP's very name."

Provincial posts and the advisory role

BBC Türkçe states that in 2009 she was elected to the Istanbul provincial executive board of the Justice and Development Party, and that from 2010 to 2012 she advised Erdoğan as party chairman. The 2012 provincial congress returned her to the board and appointed her deputy provincial chair for publicity and media. The Assembly biography also lists a provincial deputy chairmanship for foreign relations and a provincial publicity-and-media chairmanship, without years.

Central executive roles before parliament

At the fifth ordinary congress on 12 September 2015, Hürriyet reported that 31 new names entered the central board, Sayan Kaya among them, and described her as a physician who had advised Erdoğan. The Assembly biography states that she joined the Central Decision and Administration Board (Merkez Karar ve Yönetim Kurulu) at this congress. On 13 September — the date the Assembly gives for her research-and-development appointment — that board chose a new Central Executive Committee. Spokesman Ömer Çelik announced Fatma Betül Kaya, the name on the list, as deputy chair for research and development, and Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu for foreign relations. Ahmet Davutoğlu, chairman and prime minister, chaired the committee's first meeting.

She was not elected in the June 2015 general election. In the repeat election of 1 November 2015 she won an Istanbul seat. On 25 November Çelik announced a further change, recorded by the Assembly as her move to foreign relations, with Recep Akdağ named to research and development.

Parliamentary career

2015 candidacies and the 26th term

Fatma Betül Sayan Kaya stood for the Justice and Development Party (AK Parti) in both general elections held in Turkey in 2015, in different Istanbul districts. On the provisional candidate list issued by the Supreme Election Council (Yüksek Seçim Kurulu, YSK) on 14 April 2015, for the election of 7 June, she was 16th on the AK Parti list in Istanbul’s 3rd electoral district and was recorded as a university-educated engineer. That district returned 31 members of the Grand National Assembly of Turkey. The YSK’s final result gave the AK Parti 13 of those seats, on 1,149,778 votes after overseas ballots were allocated, out of 2,881,182 valid votes; the published roll of those elected does not include Sayan Kaya. The party’s 13 seats went to candidates higher on its list, from Mustafa Şentop through Halis Dalkılıç, so she did not sit in the short 25th parliamentary term.

She was nominated again for the election of 1 November 2015, this time in Istanbul’s 2nd electoral district. A published AK Parti list for that district placed her fifth, after Hayati Yazıcı, Volkan Bozkır, Burhan Kuzu and Ayşe Nur Bahçekapılı. The district elected 26 deputies. The YSK’s final result recorded 3,060,263 registered voters, turnout of 87.54 percent, and 2,722,231 valid votes once the overseas share had been distributed. The AK Parti received 1,397,763 of those votes and 14 seats; the Republican People’s Party took eight, and the Nationalist Movement Party and the Peoples’ Democratic Party two each. Sayan Kaya is fifth among the AK Parti members returned.

She sat in the Assembly’s 26th term, which the parliament’s period list dates from 17 November 2015 to 16 May 2018. On 16 May 2018 the General Assembly decided to recess from 17 May until the new parliament met after the early election of 24 June 2018, at 14:00 on the third day after the YSK announced the final results. While still a deputy she also served, from 2016, as minister of family and social policies in the 65th cabinet, and she remained in that post in the cabinet announced by Prime Minister Binali Yıldırım on 19 July 2017.

The 27th term and legislative record

At the parliamentary election of 24 June 2018 she was again returned from Istanbul’s 2nd district, which then had 28 seats. The YSK result lists her second among the AK Parti deputies elected there, after Süleyman Soylu. In that district the party won 13 seats with 1,218,889 votes, including the overseas allocation, out of 2,695,729 valid votes; turnout was 87.29 percent among 3,044,957 registered voters. The Assembly records the 27th term as running from 7 July 2018 to 23 April 2023. Its register of her plenary speeches for the term opens with the members’ oath on 7 July 2018.

The same register lists three further interventions. On 10 December 2020, in the 27th sitting of the fourth legislative year, she spoke for the AK Parti group during the third round of debate on the 2021 central-government budget bill and the 2019 final-accounts bill, on the budget of the Ministry of Family, Labour and Social Services. On 23 March 2021, in the 62nd sitting of that year, she spoke on a group motion of the Peoples’ Democratic Party. On 10 December 2022, in the 34th sitting of the sixth legislative year, she spoke during the fifth round on the 2023 budget bill and the 2021 final accounts. The 27th-term pages listing written questions that bear her signature, and bills of which she was the first signatory, contain no entries.

She was not a candidate at the general election of 14 May 2023. The YSK’s final candidate list for that election includes other candidates surnamed Sayan, but not Fatma Betül Sayan Kaya. The 28th term opened on 2 June 2023 without her.

Minister of Family and Social Policies

Appointment in the 65th government

On 24 May 2016 President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan approved the cabinet of new prime minister Binali Yıldırım, and Fatma Betül Sayan Kaya, an Istanbul deputy of the Justice and Development Party, was named minister of family and social policies in Turkey’s 65th cabinet. She replaced Sema Ramazanoğlu, whom BBC Türkçe reported was dropped after criticism of comments on a rape scandal at a Karaman dormitory linked to the Ensar Foundation. Habertürk and Hürriyet called her the only woman in that cabinet; the handover was on 25 May.

Family and Social Policies Minister Fatma Betül Sayan Kaya at a July 2017 public appearance.

In August 2015, in Ahmet Davutoğlu’s interim government, BBC Türkçe and Agence France-Presse reported that academic Ayşen Gürcan’s appointment to the same ministry was the first time a minister of the Republic had worn a headscarf.

She kept the post in the reshuffle Yıldırım announced on 19 July 2017. Until then she had been the only woman minister; Ankara deputy Jülide Sarıeroğlu’s appointment as labour and social security minister made two, and Sayan Kaya stayed. The portfolio ended with the executive presidency. On the evening of 9 July 2018, after a decree cut the ministries to 16, Erdoğan named Zehra Zümrüt Selçuk minister of labour, social services and family, merging the family and labour departments. At the 10 July ceremony Selçuk took over from Sarıeroğlu; Anadolu Agency reported that Sayan Kaya attended as the outgoing family minister.

Social assistance, family policy and fieldwork

Social assistance took most of the budget she defended. In the Plan and Budget Commission in November 2016 she said about 84 percent of the ministry’s estimated 2017 budget of 24,303,358,000 lira—20.519 billion lira—would go to social assistance. Evrensel reported that she also cited 670 million lira since 2015 in childbirth incentives, with premarital and family-education programmes still funded. For the first quarter of 2017, Bloomberg HT, using her comments to Anadolu Agency, reported payments the ministry put at 1.2 billion lira: 425 million to 558,097 elderly people and about 752 million to 539,506 people with disabilities.

An Anadolu Agency review of 2017 listed further programmes run while she was minister. A “Grandmother Project” with the Labour Ministry paid 425 lira a month to grandmothers caring for grandchildren, as support for women’s employment, in a pilot meant to cover 6,000 families in 10 provinces. From 22 June 2017 the ministry could pay, for one year, the employer’s social-security premium when an unemployed assistance recipient aged 18 to 55 was hired privately. The agency also said electronic monitoring of perpetrators, piloted in Ankara and İzmir, was extended to four further provinces and from 10 devices to 30, and that drafts were prepared of strategies on women’s empowerment and on early and forced marriage.

In November 2017 she told the budget commission the ministry was supporting 105,000 children, including 5,460 with foster families, and that mobile teams set up that June in 64 provinces had reached 2,943 children working on the street in four months. Violence-prevention centres, she said, worked around the clock in 64 provinces and were to reach all 81, while 137 women’s guest houses could hold 3,444 women and children, under the line “strong woman, strong family, strong society.”

Debate over women’s rights and child protection

In November 2016, during criminal-code debate in the Grand National Assembly of Turkey, AKP deputies proposed deferring punishment for sexual abuse of a child, where there had been no force, threat or deception, if the offender married the victim. The clause was withdrawn on 22 November after protest and after Erdoğan called for consensus. Sayan Kaya said the government was “absolutely against early marriage” and that any new text needed social agreement, while putting children’s interests and family unity first. Mor Çatı Women’s Shelter Foundation and others said withdrawal was not enough: 126 organizations warned that a separate under-12 distinction, after the Constitutional Court on 14 July 2016 annulled the rule treating every sexual act against a child under 15 as abuse, could lower the age at which consent might be inferred from 15 to 12.

On 25 November 2016 BBC Türkçe reported a bianet tally of 236 women killed by men in 11 months and sexual abuse of 368 girls. Gülsüm Kav of the We Will Stop Femicide Platform said Law No. 6284 was not applied in practice and that killings had risen under the post-coup state of emergency. The platform’s 2017 report counted 409 women killed by men, sexual abuse of 387 children and sexual violence against 332 women, including women under protection orders, and said steps such as mufti marriage powers replaced data collection under the Istanbul Convention. BBC Türkçe later cited the platform’s totals of 303 women killed in 2015, 328 in 2016 and 409 in 2017. In the 2016 budget debate Kav asked what was reserved for preventing femicide. Evrensel noted incentives for marriage and births but no shelter figure from the minister, and quoted Kav on 137 guest houses for 3,443 people—101 ministry houses serving 2,657—and on a demand for a separate women’s ministry.

In January 2018 Sayan Kaya said work with the Justice Ministry would end “good conduct” reductions in abuse cases that year, that people working with children would have periodic record checks, and that orders should also protect children, citing a Maltepe killing of girls aged two and four. She said an Ankara pilot was treating 103 perpetrators and that municipalities over 100,000 people would have to open shelters.

On 29 November 2016 a fire at a private girls’ dormitory in Aladağ, Adana, killed 11 students and one staff member and injured 22. Sayan Kaya visited with Interior Minister Süleyman Soylu and Deputy Prime Minister Veysi Kaynak. In January 2017, asked about children in religious-community dormitories, she said student housing was the state’s job and that the ministry was building 17 dormitories, mostly for girls, for the Education Ministry. In August 2017 she defended civil-marriage powers for provincial and district muftis, saying official mufti marriages would end undeclared imam marriages, child marriage and polygamy without changing the legal age, while the authority should not pass to imams. The femicide platform had already linked that law to rising killings.

2017 Netherlands diplomatic incident

The referendum and campaign restrictions in Europe

Before Turkey's 16 April 2017 constitutional referendum, ministers in President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's government campaigned in Europe for amendments that would expand presidential powers. On 3 March the cabinet of the Netherlands was told that Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu intended to address Dutch citizens of Turkish origin on 11 March. It replied that foreign governments should not campaign in an official capacity in Dutch public space, citing the risk of exporting tensions into the Turkish-Dutch community, though a private visit might be arranged if public order could be protected.

Those talks were unfinished when, on the morning of 11 March, Çavuşoğlu said on CNN Türk that Turkey would impose economic and political sanctions if he were not allowed to land. The cabinet called that threat unacceptable and withdrew landing rights for his aircraft. A government statement said a call for a large gathering in Rotterdam had put public order and safety at risk, and that discussion of a smaller, closed meeting at a consulate or embassy ended when the sanctions threat "made the quest for a reasonable compromise impossible." The government said it did not object to informational meetings for Dutch nationals eligible to vote, if they did not sharpen social tensions and organisers followed official directions.

Limits were not confined to the Netherlands. The Guardian reported that Çavuşoğlu had been barred from speaking in Hamburg, after which Erdoğan compared the restrictions in Germany to Nazi-era practices. In Austria, Chancellor Christian Kern said the government would try to stop Turkish ministers campaigning on public-security grounds. Foreign Minister Sebastian Kurz said Erdoğan was not welcome to hold rallies because they could increase friction and hinder integration. The Dutch row fell days before the general election of 15 March 2017, when Prime Minister Mark Rutte faced a challenge from Geert Wilders.

The Rotterdam standoff

Later on 11 March the cabinet learned that Family and Social Policies Minister Fatma Betül Sayan Kaya was driving from Germany toward a Rotterdam meeting. Officials told Turkey she was not welcome for campaigning and that no Turkish minister would be welcome for that purpose until 16 April. In a 10 April letter to parliament, the cabinet said Turkish authorities withheld her movements and tried to mislead Dutch officials so she could reach the city.

A mayoral emergency order and a police cordon already surrounded the Turkish consulate-general. Kaya's party was stopped nearby and did not enter. The cabinet said it required her to leave immediately, refused access to the consulate, and held that she had no special status in international law, which it limited to heads of state, heads of government and foreign ministers, accredited diplomatic and consular staff, and officials invited by the Netherlands on an official mission. Prime Minister Binali Yıldırım said the Dutch had violated her diplomatic immunity.

Accounts of the ending differ. The Guardian reported a standoff of about four hours in which Kaya accused police of violating "human rights, democracy and international law," and said that just after 1 a.m. she was led away protesting and escorted to Germany. Mayor Ahmed Aboutaleb said before 2 a.m. that she had been designated an "unwanted foreign national" and ordered out with her security staff, and accused the consul-general of falsely promising she would not come and then summoning a crowd. Rutte called the visit irresponsible and unprecedented after she had been told she was unwelcome.

The cabinet letter said that after nearly six hours she chose to cooperate and was escorted to the border, with a stop in Nijmegen so she would not cross without her party. It said her guards were uncooperative and that police, citing indications they might be armed, arrested fourteen people around midnight on suspicion of a weapons offence; no weapons were found. Turkey's temporary chargé d'affaires and the consul-general from Deventer were in the group and were released once identified; the others were later taken to Germany. Kaya tweeted from the Nijmegen border that democratic and humanitarian values were being disregarded. She then flew on to Turkey: the Guardian reported a private jet to Ankara, while the BBC reported remarks on arrival in Istanbul about "rude and rough treatment." NOS later reported that a written order allowing her to be declared an undesirable alien, sent by the national counter-terrorism coordinator to the national police chief, was never used because she decided during the night to leave.

Protests, sanctions and the lawsuit

Demonstrators gathered outside the consulate waving Turkish flags. The BBC reported that riot police used water cannon and mounted officers against about 1,000 people; the Guardian described several thousand and said that, about an hour after Kaya left, police dispersed those who remained with water cannon and mounted charges.

The Guardian reported twelve arrests and broken shop windows on Plein 1940, and said large-scale violence was avoided. Hürriyet also reported the water cannon and horses, and protests outside Dutch missions in Istanbul and Ankara.

Yıldırım promised "strong countermeasures" over what he called her expulsion. Residences of the Dutch ambassador, chargé d'affaires and consul-general in Ankara were sealed off, described as security measures. The Turkish Foreign Ministry said it did not wish the ambassador, then on leave, to return for a while, linking that message to the cancelled flight clearance. Erdoğan called the Netherlands "Nazi remnants" and fascists, and said on 12 March that if the Dutch sacrificed relations for Wednesday's election they would "pay a price." Rutte called Turkey's stance bizarre and unacceptable. The landing-ban statement called the subsequent "verbal aggression" unacceptable, and Aboutaleb answered the Nazi comparison by noting that Rotterdam had been bombarded by the Nazis.

In April, lawyer Ejder Köse said the state had given no written reason for forcing her to leave and that an expulsion he attributed to Aboutaleb, without a written explanation, broke the rules. Rutte, Foreign Minister Bert Koenders and Social Affairs Minister Lodewijk Asscher told parliament that Turkish conduct had made another solution impossible; the government said requiring her to leave accorded with international law. On 22 May, NOS reported that Köse had withdrawn a Rotterdam case against the Immigration and Naturalisation Service over a possible undesirable-alien decision or entry ban, and tied the withdrawal to the fact that no such decision was issued. DutchNews, citing De Telegraaf, reported that the claim was dropped because she left of her own accord before a formal designation, which the cabinet had authorised counter-terrorism coordinator Dick Schoof to make, could be enforced.

Later party leadership

Social-policy deputy chair

After her ministry ended in July 2018, Fatma Betül Sayan Kaya returned to party office at the Justice and Development Party's 6th ordinary congress in Ankara on 18 August 2018. Recep Tayyip Erdoğan was re-elected leader and the same day named a new Central Executive Board (Merkez Yürütme Kurulu, MYK). Anadolu Agency listed her among the members, and NTV reported the assignment as deputy chair responsible for social policies. At a handover on 19 August she took the Social Policies Chair from Öznur Çalık and said the party would strengthen social assistance and employment so that there would be a worker in every household.

The portfolio was not continuous. At the 7th ordinary congress on 24 March 2021 the MYK was reconstituted: Independent Türkçe named Jülide Sarıeroğlu social-policies chair, and Duvar English reported that Sayan Kaya was left off the board and replaced by Sarıeroğlu. She remained on the larger Central Decision and Executive Board (Merkez Karar ve Yönetim Kurulu, MKYK); NTV's list of 75 full members that day includes her. The parliamentary roll lists her as an Istanbul member for the 27th term of the Grand National Assembly. BBC Türkçe later summarized the same break: MKYK member and Istanbul deputy from that date, then MYK member and social-policies chair in 2023.

While she still held the deputy chair she spoke on family law and disability. On 21 March 2021, commenting on Turkey's withdrawal from the Istanbul Convention, she told Anadolu Agency that women's rights did not require the treaty, that Turkey could protect women through its own law, and that protection orders under Law No. 6284 remained in force. The same day, at a Turkey Special Athletes Athletics Federation event for World Down Syndrome Day, she said God does not give anyone a burden they cannot bear. Duvar English reported that parents of children with Down syndrome objected to the word "burden." After the May 2023 elections, Haber7 reported that an executive-board meeting on 19 June named her an adviser to the party chair.

Public positions through 2026

She returned to the MYK at the 4th extraordinary congress in Ankara on 7 October 2023. BBC Türkçe reported that Erdoğan received all 1,399 valid delegate votes, that Sarıeroğlu was among the MYK members not retained, and that Sayan Kaya entered the new board with social policies.

On 13 October she met in Kahramanmaraş people who had lost limbs in the 6 February 2023 earthquakes, with civil-society representatives. Anadolu Agency quoted her saying she had arrived on the first day after physician classmates asked for hospital help and stayed nearly a month, and that the state had mobilized from the outset. She said that before the party came to power disabled people had been shut away at home, whereas they now had a place in public life.

On 21 November 2025, opening a social-sciences congress at Kahramanmaraş Sütçü İmam University, she called the family a system of security, belonging and solidarity and said global threats were aimed at shaking it. She linked post-earthquake housing—schools, mosques, nurseries and vocational centres for women—to family life, and said the party was studying models placing children's care homes and nurseries beside nursing homes.

The 8th ordinary congress on 23 February 2025 left her in the post. Erdoğan was re-elected with all 1,547 delegate votes, and spokesperson Ömer Çelik announced an MYK in which she was again Social Policies Chair. Anadolu Agency, Dünya and BBC Türkçe each listed her as keeping that portfolio. She still held the social-policies chair, and membership of both the MYK and the MKYK, in September 2026.

2026 trading allegations and investigation

The funds crisis and the Özata claims

In mid-September 2026 a redemption crisis in part of Turkey's investment-fund market coincided with a sharp fall on Borsa İstanbul. The Associated Press reported that stocks plunged on 16 September amid suspected share-price manipulation involving several funds. BBC Türkçe reported that faster selling in funds whose equity holdings had been inflated drove a drop of as much as about 6 percent in the exchange index, and that some funds said they could not pay investors.

The Capital Markets Board of Turkey (Sermaye Piyasası Kurulu, SPK) ordered the liquidation of 131 funds run by seven portfolio managers—Tera, Pusula, A1 Capital, Atlas, Bulls, Hedef and Pardus—and later extended the window from three months to six. Trading in the funds was halted; Türkiye İş Bankası was assigned Tera's funds and Ziraat Bankası the other six managers. BBC Türkçe, citing Reuters, reported assets under liquidation above 890 billion lira (about $18.3 billion); the SPK said on 23 September that the funds had 455,000 individual investors. Treasury and Finance Minister Mehmet Şimşek said the problem was limited to about 10 percent of the industry by volume, with no system-wide risk, and that the affected area had been quarantined. BBC Türkçe reported that 51 people had been jailed in the investigation as of 26 September.

That day, at a Bahçelievler district congress, Yeni Parti spokesman Zeynel Emre alleged that Fatma Betül Sayan Kaya—a deputy chair of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), and family and social policies minister from 2016 to 2018—and her husband, İlyas Kaya, had traded shares of shipbuilder Özata Denizcilik before the sell-off. The Associated Press reported his claim that she bought shares, most of them in Özata, for 63.4 million lira (about $1.3 million) in April and received some 1.3 billion lira (about $27.5 million) on selling just before the drop. BBC Türkçe quoted him saying she bought 250,000 Özata shares at 255 lira, investing 63,359,000 lira, and sold in September—at a price he gave in the same remarks as both 4,482 and 4,882 lira—taking out 1.344 billion lira. Of İlyas Kaya, it quoted a claimed purchase of 99,687,000 lira, sold for 826 million lira in four or five deals from 8 April until before 16 September, four through Turkey-linked accounts and one with a foreign extension. The figures were Emre's allegations: Balkan Insight noted that the authorities had not published them, and the Associated Press reported that Sayan Kaya had not answered the trading claims directly.

Resignation from party office

On 26 September Sayan Kaya wrote on X that the claims should be clarified beyond doubt and that, taking political responsibility, she asked President and AKP leader Recep Tayyip Erdoğan to relieve her of her posts. Spokesman Ömer Çelik said she had asked to leave the Central Executive Board (Merkez Yürütme Kurulu) and the Central Decision and Administration Board (Merkez Karar ve Yönetim Kurulu), and that Erdoğan had accepted; the Associated Press reported the acceptance on 27 September. Çelik said the party believed in the presumption of innocence and would decide further steps once the legal position was clear. He told the Associated Press that "all those who are involved in irregularities, corruption, abuse or anything that causes harm will be held accountable."

Asset freeze and official response

On 28 September the Istanbul Chief Public Prosecutor's Office said that, in the funds investigation run by its Terrorism Financing and Money Laundering Crimes Investigation Bureau, a letter freezing all assets of İlyas Kaya and Fatma Betül Sayan Kaya had been sent to the relevant institutions. Balkan Insight reported the same instruction to institutions. The office described the step as part of the funds investigation; neither BBC Türkçe nor Balkan Insight reported any conviction for insider trading, market manipulation or money laundering. After a cabinet meeting Erdoğan said the government would act against market wrongdoing: "We neither violate people's rights nor turn a blind eye when the rights of our citizens are violated."

Opposition parties called the resignation insufficient and also questioned supervisors. Özgür Özel, identified by BBC Türkçe as Yeni Parti leader, said on 27 September that the couple had put in "the price of 10 apartments" and taken out "the price of 200," that resignation did not remove responsibility, and that about 2 billion lira should be returned. Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, identified by BBC Türkçe as leader of the Republican People's Party (CHP), wrote that citizens' savings must be accounted for, that the SPK should explain which risks it saw and what it did, and that "Resignation is not an explanation." The Peoples' Equality and Democracy Party (DEM Party) said the matter could not be closed by one resignation and a few fund managers, and asked why the SPK and other regulators had not acted sooner. The Workers' Party of Turkey (TİP) said the resignation showed that what it called a fund plunder was closely tied to governing circles. Fatih Erbakan, leader of the New Welfare Party, asked who would take political responsibility and said naming a few families would not close the account. Yeni Parti group deputy chair Gökhan Günaydın urged Justice Minister Akın Gürlek to investigate and said it was "clear" she had traded on inside information.

On 29 September Euronews, citing Ekonomim, reported that the couple had transferred about 2.2 billion lira—described as the alleged Özata proceeds—to an account designated by the Treasury and Finance Ministry. Balkan Insight reported a media claim of about 39.5 million euros and said the payment had not been publicly confirmed. Emre and Günaydın said an SPK bulletin on effective remorse contemplated twice the alleged gain, which they put at 4.4 billion lira; that the couple were not on that bulletin's list; and that a Treasury payment would not follow that rule, compensate investors, or end the case. As of 29–30 September 2026 the investigation remained open, with the asset freeze in place.

Personal life

Marriage and children

The biography published by the Grand National Assembly of Turkey states that Fatma Betül Sayan Kaya is married and the mother of two children, and that she speaks English and German at a very good level. Her husband, İlyas Kaya, is a physician and assistant professor of child and adolescent psychiatry in the Istanbul Faculty of Medicine at Istanbul University. The university's academic register lists his medical degree from that faculty for 2002–2008 and his specialty training there for 2008–2013.

In November 2019, speaking in Hakkari as a deputy chair of the Justice and Development Party and an Istanbul member of parliament, she said she had first come to the province in 2010 for her wedding, which she said was cut to one day after a terrorist organization ordered shops closed and weddings stopped. A news account names the children as a son, Ahmet Akif, and a daughter, Ayşe Zeynep. In June 2024 TGRT Haber reported that Ahmet Akif was among 352 pupils with full marks on that year's high-school placement examination, after Sayan Kaya wrote on social media that she was proud of him. On 29 September 2026 the Istanbul Chief Public Prosecutor's Office said that, in a fund investigation, it had asked institutions to freeze all assets of the physician İlyas Kaya and of his wife.

Relatives in public office

The parliamentary biography names her parents as Ramazan and Hatice. A May 2016 Hürriyet report on the handover of the Ministry of Family and Social Policies described her father, Ramazan Sayan, as a lawyer and a longtime associate of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, and her mother, Hatice Sayan, as a lawyer known for work in the party's women's branches.

Her brother Ömer Fatih Sayan was appointed president of Turkey's Information and Communication Technologies Authority (BTK) on 25 August 2015. A presidential decision published in the Official Gazette of 21 July 2018 appointed him a deputy minister at the Ministry of Transport and Infrastructure. Presidential Decision 2026/155, dated 3 July 2026 and published the next day, appointed him—then identified in the decision as that deputy minister—to the board of the Energy Market Regulatory Authority, and appointed Ahmet Hamdi Atalay to the deputy-minister post.

Her sister Ayşe Hilal Sayan Koytak, born in Istanbul in 1979, worked from 2005 to 2016 as a foreign-policy adviser at the Prime Ministry and as a deputy undersecretary at the Ministry of Family and Social Policies. Hürriyet reported in May 2016 that she was acting deputy undersecretary there when Sayan Kaya became minister. The embassy biography states that she was Turkey's ambassador to Kuwait from 2017 to 2022, then director general for information technologies and for science and technology policies at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs from 2023 until December 2024, and that a presidential decree of 24 October 2024 appointed her ambassador to Bahrain, where she began on 1 December 2024. On 5 September 2026, NTV reported that decisions published that day in the Official Gazette moved her from Bahrain to the embassy in Finland.

A further sister, Nazmiye Sümeyye Sayan, born in 1989, was reported in March 2017 to be a Justice and Development Party member of the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality council, representing the district of Fatih.