MOM WHO READ LAW NOTES TO BLIND DAUGHTER GOT HONORARY DEGREE
Sakarya University in Turkey gave Havva Kul an honorary law degree after she spent four years reading lecture notes and law books to her visually impaired daughter, Berru Merve Kul, so Berru could get through law school. Havva went with Berru to campus every day from their home in Kocaeli, and the two walked up to the graduation podium together.
Daily Sabah reported that Berru graduated from the university’s Department of Law with honors. That is not an easy feat on a law curriculum, and she did it without being able to read the material herself. Her mother did the reading.
Professor Mahmut Bilen, dean of the Faculty of Law, presented the awards. The BBC reported that he handed them to both women.
“We wanted to thank the mother and the daughter who have shown a great deal of effort,” Bilen said.
He also said Berru’s graduation with honors, despite such a demanding course, took great sacrifice, and that the achievement should be shared with her mother, according to Daily Sabah.
Applause for both of them
Bilen shared a video of the ceremony. It showed students and professors applauding as mother and daughter walked up to the podium. Berru collected her graduation certificate and Havva collected a certificate of her own.
The clip spread fast. By July 13, 2018, images of the moment had been shared tens of thousands of times across Facebook, Twitter and Reddit.
Coverage of the award earned more than 58,000 likes on Reddit. One blogger’s tweet calling Havva “mother of the year” passed 88,000 likes. Another social media user went bigger and called her “not just the mother of the year but of the century.”
“There are no words to define this perfect mother,” one commenter wrote. On Facebook, Tabularin Yikilisi wrote, “What a wonderful mother you are.”
One Reddit user had a more personal take on the workload. “I once tried to read a chapter out of a legal textbook and almost passed out,” the user wrote.
Not everyone was only cheering. Some social media users criticized authorities for not giving visually impaired students enough support. One user called for more Braille reading material and audio sources in libraries and computer rooms.
The story keeps coming back
The ceremony went viral again years later. Hindustan Times reported that the story resurfaced online in June 2023 after an old graduation image was shared on social media. The Indian Express had covered the original ceremony video on July 15, 2018.
A post by the account Wolf of X retold it on July 23, 2026. Posts on r/BeAmazed shared it on June 15, 2026, and again on August 2, 2026.
