A pair of extremely rare conjoined twins, who have never been seen each other's faces since they opened their eyes to the world in Turkey's Mediterranean province of Antalya, are now successfully separated after a series of surgical operations in London.
The Evrensel family was sent to the British capital in December for the highly risky operations after an intervention by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and First Lady Emine Erdoğan. Doctors then outlined a detailed plan to determine the best way to separate them.
Conjoined at the crown of the head, Derman and Yiğit, have defied the odds stacked against their survival. They were unable to crawl without hurting each other, nor simultaneously face the same direction.
The boys had shared a portion of their skulls but not a brain, hence the operations entailed complex and high-risk surgical procedures as the twins shared a cerebral vein.
Six months after living in the U.K., the Evrensel family is expected to return to Turkey on Wednesday, able to hold each of their sons separately.
The toddlers, who were born in 2018, will celebrate their first independent birthday on June 21 .
