In loving memory
Who was Ayla Kara?
a teacher, to the very end
Ayla Kara was a mathematics teacher at Ayser Çalık Middle School in Kahramanmaraş, Türkiye. On 15 April 2026, when gunfire broke out at her school, she gathered her students in the back corner of the classroom, held the door and stood in front of them. She was killed; the children behind her survived.
Her students called her Ayla Öğretmen, “Teacher Ayla”. In Türkiye she is remembered as Şehit Öğretmen, a teacher who gave her life in the line of duty.
Her life
Ayla was born on 21 August 1970 in Urganlı, a village in the Turgutlu district of Manisa, in western Türkiye. She studied mathematics at Uludağ University in Bursa.
She began teaching in 1997 as a primary school teacher at Mahmutbey Primary School in Istanbul and later became a mathematics teacher. In 2001 she moved to Kahramanmaraş, her husband's hometown, and spent the rest of her life teaching there: at the Mahmutbey, Cüceli, Maksutlu, Yavuz Selim, Öğretmenler, Zeytinderesi and Ali Galip Çalık schools, and finally at Ayser Çalık Middle School, where she was among the very first teachers.
She married Ramazan Kara, a certified public accountant, in 1994. They have three children: Dilara, Furkan and Ertuğrul Mert.
Her name lives on
Two places in Kahramanmaraş now carry her name: the TOBB Şehit Öğretmen Ayla Kara Science High School, and the library of the Abdülhamithan Mosque Youth Centre.
She rests in Tekir Cemetery in Onikişubat, Kahramanmaraş. Visitors to this site have read the Fatiha, the opening prayer of the Qur'an, for her soul thousands of times.
Remember her
The rest of the site is in Turkish, but you are welcome everywhere.