After meeting him on a rebound trip to Turkey, a mum who married a Turkish man says she’s lost friends because they claimed he’s with her for a visa.
Amy Ugurlu, 34, from Glasgow, traveled to the beach resort of Kusadasi with a friend in July 2020 to cheer herself up after a bad breakup.
According to The Sun, “While out in a bar, 25-year-old Mahsum Ugurlu caught the mum-of-one’s eye, and the pair started chatting, but didn’t exchange contact details when they parted.”
Amy said that after returning from her sun-soaked trip, she found Mahsum on Facebook and added him. And within 20 minutes of accepting her friend request, Mahsum FaceTimed her.
“After their initial chat, the pair started dating, and Amy managed to return to Turkey twice before Covid lockdown rules put the country on the red list, and they were separated for eight months.”
“But the love birds were so determined to be reunited that they flew to Kyiv, Ukraine, in July 2021, before eventually bidding a tearful goodbye and returning to their home countries,” Daily Mail wrote.
In February 2022, Mahsum met Amy in Scotland and confessed his feelings for her. He told Amy that he wanted to skip the engagement part of their relationship and directly wanted to get married.
Seven months later, the pair tied the knot in September.
Despite having a wonderful love story with the man of her dreams, Amy said she had to face bitter criticism from her friends who claimed Mahsum only married her for a visa.
“I didn’t expect to meet the love of my life on holiday. I split up with my little boy’s dad so a friend and I decided to go away for a little break together. It was to get over a bit of heartbreak and away from life in general in Scotland,” she said.
“I saw Mahsum in passing in one of the bars and said to my friend “oh, he’s quite nice”. I spoke to him and asked where in Turkey he was from and so on, but nothing came of it.”
“Then I came home and was sitting looking on Facebook and I have quite a lot of friends in Kusadasi. A guy that worked in the bar was on my Facebook, so I was looking through his profile and came across Mahsum’s.”
The Glasgow native continued, “I thought I wasn’t going to add him, but then a few nights later me and my friend had a little drink, and I thought “what have I got to lose?” so I just added him, and then 20 minutes later he FaceTimed me. And from there, it just turned into one big love story.”
The mum-of-one said she fell in love with Mahsum because he was lovely, nice, and funny. He made her feel good about life again and cared for her when she was going through a rough patch in life.
“He wanted me to speak to his parents on the phone. He’s Kurdish, and they’re quite strict over there with their culture and religion, so he was a bit worried that they wouldn’t accept me because I wasn’t Muslim and already had a child, but they did,” she said.
“He speaks English, at first it wasn’t the best. It would take me a lot of time to get him to understand some of the things that I was saying, I could tell right away if he could understand me or not just by the look on his face.”
“I love their culture and going over to see his family, it’s so different from our life. They’re a very close-knit family and their house is always busy. I love their way of living and culture but also enjoy my peace and quiet.”
Speaking of her mean and judgmental friends, Amy said she got to know about them through another friend.
“A friend told me about the judgmental people and that you need to grow a thick skin fast if you want your relationship to work, and not let other people get in your head.”
“She’s been married to a Turk for 15 years and still gets silly comments from people that aren’t educated on how you get a visa. People think they just come here and that’s it, they’ve “got their golden ticket,” as someone wrote to me on TikTok,” she said.
She said that initially, she used to be bothered by people’s comments about their relationship, but now she’s grown a thick skin.
“I think, ‘Please go and educate yourself on how hard it is to get a visa’ as they think that once they’re in the country that’s it. But after two-and-a-half years he has to apply for an extension of his visa, then after another two-and-a-half years for indefinite leave to remain.
“If anyone told me that I was going to go back to Turkey, meet someone and marry them within a year, I would have told them ‘not a chance’, but with him it was just so different.”
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Sources: Daily Mail – The Sun
