KEY POINTS:
When the call came to say Prime Minister Helen Clark would get involved in the fight to bring abducted Kiwi-born toddler Dylan Laybourn back home, Bruce Laybourn broke down and sobbed.
The news brought hope in a long and lonely battle, which began 18 months ago when his
son was abducted by his wife and her family during a three-week trip to Turkey.
Since then he has spent more than $200,000 trying to get Dylan back.
Under the Hague Convention on Child Abduction, any custody dispute should be heard in the child's country of origin. But Turkey does not recognise New Zealand's membership of the Hague Convention.
So as Laybourn struggles to find a way to get access to his son, all he has left are memories, video footage and a pile of toys, baby clothes and cards - gifts he sent to Dylan but which have been returned.
Laybourn, 53, told the Herald on Sunday of meeting his wife Gulsen Nil Laybourn, 36, more than seven years ago in Auckland. They married four years later.
"Everything seemed perfect," he said. He described her as "a great lady" and said they were "in love".
Nil appeared on the cover of Laybourn's travel magazine Destination and the couple travelled widely together, including to Gallipoli, where Laybourn's grandfather served as a soldier.
When Dylan was born in Auckland in January last year, Nil's Kurdish mother and sister came from Turkey for the birth and stayed in the couple's Newmarket home for four months.
Laybourn remembers the day they left with Nil and Dylan to visit family members in Turkey. "I gave the wee boy a big hug and handed him over." He never thought Dylan would not be coming back, even though Laybourn's mother warned him about Nil's mother.
"My mother... took me aside and said 'That woman is going to steal your baby'."
Laybourn confronted his wife. "She said 'no, there is absolutely no way. I love it here and I want Dylan to grow up here'."
He believed her. His wife had embraced the Kiwi lifestyle and competed in a triathlon, he said.
"I mean you can't do any of those things in Istanbul."
Laybourn can't explain why Nil is keeping Dylan from him. He has visited her twice in Turkey and each time she indicated she wanted to return to New Zealand, he said.
He claims her family has coerced her and last year took away her and Dylan's New Zealand passports.
Last December, a Turkish court awarded custody of Dylan to Nil and granted a divorce. The first Laybourn knew of it was when he received the paperwork.
Nil said she had not seen any court papers, nor had she signed them. "Sure enough her signature is not anywhere on the divorce papers," Laybourn said.
He appealed the custody order and returned to Turkey in February. With the help of a Turkish lawyer and after paying thousands of dollars to bribe court officials to visit Nil's family home, Laybourn spent a week with her and Dylan in an Istanbul hotel.
He claims that by the end of that week, Nil had agreed to return to New Zealand with Dylan. But after he left, the family threatened to cut Nil off completely if she left.
Laybourn just wanted his son back and could not imagine him growing up any other place. "He's a Kiwi, he's a Laybourn, he's my son.
"He's not going to be happy and as he gets older he is going to demand to know, 'Where's my Dad?"'
