About Sabiha Gökçen Sabiha Gökçen (March 22, 1913, Bursa—March 22, 2001, Ankara) was the first female combat pilot and the first Turkish aviatrix, aged 23. She was one of the eight adopted children of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk.Early life According to Turkish sources and interviews with Sabiha Gökçen, she was the daughter of Mustafa İzzet Bey and Hayriye Hanım who was an ethnic Bosniak. The journalist Hrant Dink published an article titled "The secret of Sabiha Hatun" in which a former Gaziantep resident, Hripsime Sebilciyan, claimed to be Gökçen's niece, implying Armenian ancestry. Official Turkish sources, and the only living adopted daughter of Atatürk, Ülkü Adatepe, have contested this claim. During Atatürk's visit to Bursa in 1925, Sabiha, who was only 12 years old, asked for permission to talk with Atatürk and expressed her wish to study in a boarding school. After learning her story and about her miserable living conditions, Atatürk decided to adopt her and asked Sabiha's brother for permission to take her to the Çankaya Presidential Residence in Ankara, where Sabiha would live among Atatürk's other adoptive daughters, Zehra, Afet and Rukiye. Sabiha attended the Çankaya Primary School in Ankara and the Üsküdar Girls' College in Istanbul. Just after the introduction of the surname act, Atatürk gave her the family name Gökçen on December 19, 1934. Gök means sky in Turkish and Gökçen means 'belonging or relating to the sky'. However, she was not an aviator at the date, and it was only six months later that Sabiha developed a passion for flying.