French centenarian, he was the oldest man in France (le doyen masculin des Français) from 21 August 2012 to 15 September 2013. He succeeded Louis Le Bouëdec as oldest man and preceded Philippe Vocanson.
At the end of the 1920s, he went to Paris to work in a parachute factory, then joined the RATP. In 1931, he married Lucienne Crête, a seamstress. He did not have children with her, according to his own words, for lack of free time. She died in 1992.
He was mobilized during the Second World War, but was not called up to fight.
In his fifties, Turlant retired. He then moved to Beaumont-la-Ferrière in Nièvre, where he lived alone until the age of 92, when he decided to go into a retirement home because of the difficulties encountered in managing his daily life.
In 2012 and 2013, he enjoyed celebrating his 108 and 109th birthdays drinking wine and eating cake.
Throughout his life, Émile Turlant always ate vegetables from his garden, he was rarely ill and never underwent surgery. Turlant lived through World War I, the Great Depression, World War II and witnessed the end of the Third and Fourth Republics, the Cold War and the birth of the Internet among other things.
He died on 15 September 2013 at age 109 in Varennes-Vauzelles at the Pignelin cure centre where he had resided since 1996.
Link to Wikipedia biography (French)