Nazmiye Muratoğlu

Turkish disability rights pioneer who transformed Paralympic sports infrastructure

Nazmiye Muratoğlu (b. 1982), born with cerebral palsy in rural Anatolia, became Turkey's first Paralympic gold medalist while radically changing perceptions of disability. After being hidden by her family until age 12, she fought to attend school and later developed the Turkish Paralympic Redesign Project in 2010.

Her Three-Dimensional Training System uniquely combines: 1) Village sports scouts 2) Custom prosthetics from recycled materials 3) Athlete marriage matchmaking (combating stigma). This system produced 78% of Turkey's current Paralympic team, including world-record holder wheelchair racer Hamide Doğangün.

Muratoğlu's 2017 Istanbul Adaptive Sports Complex introduced wind tunnel wheelchair training and AI-powered motion analysis - technologies later adopted by Team USA. Her TEDx talk 'Winning with Broken Bodies' reframed disability as competitive advantage in endurance sports.

Beyond athletics, she created Turkey's first disability-led farming cooperatives, proving paralyzed workers can increase crop yields through specialized tools. Muratoğlu's unorthodox methods - like having able-bodied coaches compete blindfolded - earned her the Council of Europe Human Rights Prize in 2022.