Turkish Family and Social Policies Minister Fatma Betül Sayan Kaya has appointed Aysel Kandemir, the assistant of her brother Ömer Fatih Sayan, who is the chair of the Information and Communications Technologies Authority (BTK), as ministry undersecretary.
Kaya came under increased media attention due to the positions her family members were appointed to in the government.
Kaya’s brother Ömer Fatih Sayan is chairman of the BTK.
Minister Kaya’s sister, Ayşe Sayan Koytak, was appointed as Turkey’s ambassador to Kuwait. Koytak is among five new ambassadors who have been appointed from outside Turkey’s Foreign Ministry.
Koytak had resigned as deputy undersecretary of Ministry of Family and Social Policy when her sister, Kaya, was named a new minister in the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) Cabinet in May 2016.
Another sister of Minister Kaya, Nazmiye Sayan, is a member of the İstanbul City Council.
Turkish Minister Kaya was expelled from the Netherlands on the night of March 11 after she insisted on going to the residence of the Turkish Consulate General in Rotterdam to hold a rally ahead of critical referendum on April 16 on a constitutional reform package on executive presidency.
“If our esteemed president [Recep Tayyip Erdoğan] had not called me from Ankara and said, ‘You can return now,’ I would not have left and would have died there. You can be sure about this. Sometimes, the state, the nation, come before everything else,” told Kaya to media on March 14.