Supercentenarian

According to birth-registry records, Halim Somaz, a resident of Diyarbakir in south-eastern Turkey, is 125 years old. She was born in Agri, Turkey, near the border with Armenia, on July 1, 1884, and brought up during the time of the Ottoman Empire.

If Somaz's birth date can be verified, she would be the oldest person in the world, surpassing Kama Chinen of Japan, who was born in 1895.

Somaz has seven children, 54 grandchildren and around 150 great-grandchildren.

One of her early memories is serving a yoghurt drink to Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founder of modern Turkey, when he visited her Kurtalan district, according to the Turkish state-run Anatolian agency.

Ataturk arrived at the village on horseback and she and her relatives greeted him, and she personally offered him ayran, a traditional yoghurt drink, she told the news agency. "Ataturk was very handsome. He was on a horse and was accompanied by cavalrymen."

Experts are trying to substantiate Halim's claim to being the oldest person. There efforts are hampered by the difficulty of tracing public records dating back to the Ottoman Empire, which ceased to exist in the early 1920s.

nrt/AFP
Editor: Nancy Isenson