Father of abducted toddler buoyed by minister's help

Dylan Laybourn. Photo / Supplied

An Auckland man searching for his 2-year-old son in Istanbul is encouraged by high-level intervention by Foreign Affairs Minister Murray McCully but is no closer to spending time with the boy.

Bruce Laybourn flew to Istanbul a month ago to spend August with his New Zealand-born son, Dylan, under an interim access arrangement ordered by the Turkish courts.

He arrived to find his Turkish-born ex-wife Nil Laybourn had taken the boy into hiding.

Despite efforts by the New Zealand Embassy, approaches by his Turkish lawyer to police and media coverage of his plight in Istanbul, Mr Laybourn's attempts to see his son have proved fruitless.

An application for the Turkish Court to rule on a breach of the access order has received a November hearing date.

But the 54-year-old publisher of Destinations magazine is not giving up.

"The court order states that my month starts from the time Dylan is delivered to my care," Mr Laybourn told the Weekend Herald.

On Thursday, he met for six hours with abduction specialists at Uskudar Child Police in Istanbul at the invitation of the section director.

Mr Laybourn has tried under the Hague Convention on child abductions to have Dylan returned to New Zealand for a custody hearing since May 2007, when his former wife - a New Zealand citizen - took the then 3-month-old to visit her family and didn't return.

But his efforts have been blocked by a technical hitch - Turkey had not officially recognised New Zealand's Hague Convention status at the time of the abduction.

Diplomatic efforts escalated shortly before last year's election when former Prime Minister Helen Clark wrote to Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Mr McCully has now written to his Turkish counterpart asking that Turkey agree to apply the Hague Convention retrospectively.

Mr Laybourn says if the Turks accept the proposal, his ex-wife's behaviour will be "powerful support for our argument that Dylan must be returned to New Zealand".

"Both my appeal against the custody given to Dylan's mother by the Turkish courts and the application to the Turkish Supreme Court for Dylan's return ... will benefit from this court-defying action."