Jan 2, 2018 5 min read

An attempted coup d’état against Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in July 2016 led to mass arrests and crackdowns on sources of possible dissent, with tens of thousands of teachers being suspended or having their licenses revoked, and hundreds of educational institutions being forced to shut their doors.

Upper St. Clair resident Sebnem Unlu had taught molecular genetics and biology at two of the affected universities in Turkey, her native country, during the two years prior to their closing, following several years as a postdoctoral research assistant at the University of Pittsburgh and member of the research faculty at the university’s Cancer Research Institute.

She and her husband, Yakup, have two children, Safiye and Yusuf.

What brought you and your family to the Pittsburgh area, and what do you enjoy about living here?

I came to the United States 15 years ago to do my postdoctoral training at Harvard Medical School. We were there about six months, and then my adviser decided to come here to Pittsburgh. We were appointed at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, and I worked there for about nine years.

I like the diversity. I like being with people who are different from me. I like learning from them. I like intercultural dialogue and interfaith dialogue. I like to interact with others.

As a longtime member of the executive committee of the Turkish Cultural Center Pittsburgh, how do you work toward fulfilling its mission of promoting better understanding?

Since the beginning, we have been very much involved in trying to bring together people from all different backgrounds. Our point is to get people to converse with each other, to get to know each other on a personal level.

We are involved in trying to introduce and explain the Turkish culture here in the United States, which I think is very important because it has a lot to contribute, in promoting understanding, peace and dialogue.

Annually, we have friendship dinners, and every month we have Turkish coffee nights. We have community picnics in the summers. On the weekends, we invite our children, the Turkish community children, to come and for us to teach them Turkish culture.

As a practicing Muslim, how do you work toward providing insight to others with regard to your faith?

Along with my research, along with my scientific experience, I have been involved in freelance writing. I have written many articles on promoting better understanding of Sufism and Islam. Sufism is a very traditional part of Islam, and it’s the spiritual side of Islam.

There are Muslims in almost every single country on the globe. Muslims have contributed greatly in history. For example, we talk about algorithms. Algorithms were discovered by Al-Khwarizmi. He was a great mathematician. And as we know, the Renaissance that took place in Europe was because of the Muslim, Christian and Jewish academics and scholars getting together and translating the works of Aristotle and many of the Greek scholars and introducing them back to the world.

Why did you decide to study biochemistry and become involved with cancer research?

When we were young, my father always taught us chemistry, physics and biology. He would allow us to go out and play, and then he would call us back home and say, “You have to come and study.” For him, education was very important. It doesn’t matter what gender you are. The most important thing is education, to enlighten minds.

And he gave us a lot inspiration to study science. In fact, I wanted to study medicine and go to medical school, but I decided not to. I studied biochemistry as my undergraduate degree, and then I went on to do a Ph.D. in pharmacology at Imperial College, London. From there, I went to Turkey and taught for one or two years, and came to the U.S. to do my postdoctoral training.

So since I was a young child, I was very much involved in science and getting to know more about creation. For us, science is nothing secular. It is something that leads us to God. It is an act of worship to do research and science, and to contemplate the great wisdom and complexity in creation. So being religious and being a scientist, they’re not contradictory. They corroborate each other.

What do you hope to see regarding the future of Turkey?

We have more than 17,000 women and children in prisons, about 700 children with their mothers, and we have academics and journalists in prison. They’re all political prisoners. And this is a blatant violation of human rights that should stop immediately.

We should give more importance to human rights over politics, and we should give more importance to the human being over anything else. The human being is more precious than any politics or any power.