Twenty Years Later…
Opereysin was never a “professional” project for us.
The blog — named by my brother İsmail — began when he was just starting high school, and I was about to leave Istanbul to study medicine. It was born from the simple idea of staying in touch, sharing slices of daily life, and building something together. Its flashy first post ended with the line, “Sit back and start watching. You’ll see a lot!” It sounded ambitious, even dramatic — and honestly, if you had told us back then that it would still be alive 20 years later, we probably wouldn’t have believed you.
From August 2005 to January 2019, we wrote and published without missing a beat: Fourteen straight years of content. After that, it continued in cycles — a few posts being published for a while, followed by long pauses. We try not to be too hard on ourselves — after all, this was a content site run by two doctors. It would’ve been impossible not to feel the impact of a global pandemic, the grind of residency training, or the relocations that came with compulsory service in different cities. If a hundred blogs started the journey with us back in 2005, we’d be surprised if more than a handful have made it this far. And though we began with the motto “time grinding machine,” yet in the end, isn’t that what time does to everything?
Over the years, we’ve tried many “unusual” things. Back when “unfiltered” content was the rage and the internet was believed to be a place where anyone could say anything to everyone, we proudly claimed: “Your kids are safe on this site!”. We recorded audio versions of selected articles for visually impaired readers. We made intro videos, animations, short films — and yes, we wrote. We wrote a lot.
Through our quiet little translation program, we set out with volunteers who wanted to improve their English and contribute to Turkish-language web content. The process was simple: assignments were distributed, reviewed by experienced editors, and returned with detailed feedback. It worked beautifully. In just a few years, 38 translators had published 270 pieces on Opereyşın. Had we not been held back by technical limitations, that number would surely have been much higher.
Recently, we’ve been gradually rebuilding the conditions needed to publish regularly again.
Our goal remains the same: to bring clean, thoughtful Turkish content to those who care. This time, we’re adding English to the mix.
Will it attract attention? We truly don’t know.
But the answer to “Is it worth it?” has always been obvious to us.
Because Opereyşın was never a professional project.
The strange, hard-to-name excitement we felt when we were 15 and 18, trying to write something meaningful, never really went away.
Now, with everything the years have taught us, it feels like it’s time to begin again.
Now feels like the time to say something new.
