Athletics saved Turkish girl from marriage at young age

The Turkish Athletic Federation's discovery of Meryem Bekmez's remarkable skills in athletics at the age of 12 saved her from getting married at a young age.

"She would have been married off like her sister, or would be working on the field," said her father Hacı Bekmez, had she not been "discovered" yet.

The 16-year-old's life changed four years ago when the Turkish Athletic Federation's coach Çetin Aslan came to her school in the southeastern province of Diyarbakır's Şilbe village. Aslan had chosen the "golden athlete" candidates. Among them was Meryem Bekmez, who was a 7th grader in middle school at the time.

Bekmez ranked first in the three-kilometer running competition in an intra-school tournament held in the Diyarbakır province, then came in first in Turkey. In this same year, Bekmez was summoned to the national team camp and then won first place in the Balkan Championship in Greece. But, once her coach Aslan had seen that the youngster could very well "imitate" the race walk athletes, he changed her branch from "running" to "race walking," a long-distance discipline within the sport of athletics.

After breaking Turkey's record in 2015, she snatched the gold medal in the European Race Walking Cup in the five-kilometer race walking championship as well as in the junior 10-kilometer competition organized in Georgia. In the following year, she came in first in the 2016 European Athletics Championships in the Czech Republic.

This year, Bekmez snatched silver in the IAAF World Under-18 Championships held in Kenya from July 12-16. In the championship, she walked away as one of the world's most successful athletes among others from 120 different countries. In the European Athletics U20 Championships 2017 held in Italy, she...