ANKARA - Turkish Daily News

  This week saw two milestones for Turkish women in the worlds of business and politics, with the head positions at influential Turkish Industrialists and Businessmen's Association (TÜSİAD) and a Council of Europe committee going to Arzuhan Doğan Yalçındağ and Gülsün Bilgehan respectively.

  Yalçındağ was elected yesterday to the top position at TÜSİAD, the first female to do so in the organization's 36-year history.

  “It is a great honor for me to be elected the first chairwoman of the group's executive board,” she said in her first address at the helm of TÜSİAD. Yalçındağ, a member of the board at the country's biggest media group, Doğan, replaces Ömer Sabancı of the Sabancı conglomerate, who had headed TÜSİAD since 2003.

  Bilgehan, deputy from main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP), was on Monday unanimously elected head of the Parliamentary Assembly of Council of Europe (PACE) committee on gender-based equal opportunities.

  “Few committees at PACE are chaired by Turks but it is particularly meaningful that a Turkish woman was elected to chair a committee dealing with women's rights, equality, honor killings, domestic violence, forced marriage and the education of girls,” she said.