Ay family

Who is Ay family?

The Ay family are Kurdish asylum seekers who became the centre of a controversy in 2003 surrounding the policy of locking up children in high security immigration detention centres in the United Kingdom.

Salih and Yurdugal Ay were Kurds seeking asylum who came to the UK to escape persecution in Turkey, it being alleged that Mrs Ay had been locked up and raped by Turkish militia. They brought their four children with them and settled in Gravesend in Kent where the children attended local schools. Salih was deported to Germany and from there further deported back to Turkey where he disappeared.

In 2002, Yurdugal Ay and her children were suddenly removed from their home by immigration officials and taken to Dungavel detention centre in South Lanarkshire, Scotland. They were all put together in one room where they lived for a year inside a razor wire surrounded compound. Yurdugal could not speak English very well so it was up to her eldest daughter, Beriwan Ay aged 13, to negotiate for her mother and her sisters. The family were threatened with deportation but appealed. It was claimed by the authorities that they had brought the long stay at Dungavel upon themselves by this appeal.