You need to be okay with failure to succeed. — Not just 10 years. I have been battling with eating habits since I was born. It’s not an exaggeration. When I was a baby, my eating regime was my mother’s biggest problem, even though my doctor had told her that I was healthy and didn’t need more food. She declared…

Get rid of your story and be free! — Growing up in Turkey, I was terrified of cats. My nickname was “Mouse.” My fear of cats was my identity. I had an origin story, too. A cat had stolen a little chick from our neighbor’s chicken coop and killed it. I don’t remember if I had actually witnessed the…

One idea is all you need — “Unless your campaign contains a big idea, it will pass like a ship in the night.” David Ogilvy, “Father of Advertising” “Save money, secure your future, and enjoy hassle-free banking with Bank X!” When I first started copywriting, my first instinct was to stuff many ideas into one headline. One…

How I stopped dreading dishwashing and learned to love the suds — I hate doing the dishes! And proving the life coaches and spiritual gurus right, the universe brings me more dishes and takes away my dishwasher. Yeah, of course, I feel gratitude about having the dishes in the first place, and food to spoil them. …

I wish I could do it 30 years ago. — All my friends rushed to get their driving licenses as soon as they turned 18. I wasn’t in a hurry. “I’ll get it one day,” I said. My family never had a car when I was growing up in small towns in Turkey. Most families didn’t. We would walk everywhere…

The Turkish justice system’s relentless pursuit of an academic — On the 9th of July, 1998, I received an email from a Danish friend: “There was an explosion in Istanbul, are you okay?” I was okay and didn’t know anything about the blast. Soon, the details surfaced. …

Captivate your audience — One legendary ad campaign changed Apple’s fate in 1997: “Think Different.” Before the campaign, Apple was in decline. …

“The real story of Amélie” ? — I woke up this morning to a WhatsApp message from my old cinephile friend in Turkey which left me in shock. It was a news story that said “Jean Pierre Jeunet revealed that Amélie was in fact a KGB spy!” How could that be? Can Amélie really be a spy…

From Anatolia with love — Did you know that in 1960, Turkey actually produced the largest number of movies in the world, surpassing even the United States and India? This period is often referred to as the “golden age” of Turkish cinema, which lasted until the 1980 military coup. I grew up with those films…