The first Turkish blind person works as a software engineer in Facebook confirms: Thanks to my mother

Turkish software engineer Burak Koray Polat - who lost his sight when he was young - is proud to work at Facebook headquarters in California, USA, to be the first blind Turkish working for the company, owner of the famous social networking site.

Polat, 23, lost his sight at the age of six, completed his studies in the capital Ankara until the third year of high school, then traveled to the United States to complete his studies under the "guest students" project, and at that time he succeeded in obtaining a scholarship to study software engineering at the University of Miami.

During his studies in the last grade from the university, he applied to work for Facebook, and after receiving a positive response from the company's management, he traveled alone from the eastern United States to the west.

After succeeding in passing the oral and written tests he had with tens of thousands of applicants, Polat began working on Facebook to become the first blind Turkish working as a software engineer at the headquarters of the famous American company.

He led a working group to develop a GPS program to help blind students - at the university where he studied - to reach wherever they want to go without assistance.

Polat also aims to develop a platform that brings together all blind students in Turkey who want to make progress in the scientific field.

Thanks to my mom
In an interview with Anatolia, Polat said that the greatest credit for his success was his mother.

"When my mother attended the graduation ceremony of my university, I went to receive her while I was wearing a Facebook-style jacket, and I told her for the first time that I had a job because until that time she thought I was still looking for work."

He continued, "One of the problems that people with disabilities suffer from is lack of self-confidence. In fact, the best advice I can give to my visually impaired brothers, brothers and sisters is: The more you develop yourselves, the easier it will be for you to get rid of the crisis of self-confidence caused by visual disability." .

Hard traverse
Zainab Noor, the mother of the engineer, said that she was very sad because of her son's loss of sight, but she was proud of the success he had achieved throughout his educational life.

She described her son as a "source of pride for the family," adding, "I was sure that he would succeed in his life, and I created it as ordinary mothers do, and he made a great effort to travel abroad and was able to traverse the difficult."

While his father, Ogun Burak Polat, confirmed that his son had overcome all the problems he faced in his life, and did not reflect them in any way on his family members.

Ogun considered that his son's "stubborn personality" helped him get what he wanted.

He called on families with blind children to get rid of prejudices against their children, if they wanted their children to succeed in their lives.

Polat the father saw that his son blessed him with a great blessing.

He pointed out that Polat told him a word summarizing his story, which is "My dear father, do not be sad for me, because I can do all the work you do except for driving a car."