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One of the early English-language windows into Turkey for the rest of the world. At its peak, a genuinely busy place — headlines, wire stories, the daily pulse of a country at an interesting moment in history. It ran through wars, elections, earthquakes, and a pandemic.

The Library of Congress thought it was worth keeping. They were right. TurkishPress.com is preserved in the September 11 Web Archive — part of the national archive of the United States. Not many personal projects earn that.

Anatolia. The word itself is a geography and a feeling at once — the ancient plateau, the cradle of civilisations, the land that connects everything to everything else.

This domain was held for a time and has since passed to new hands, and good ones. A Turkish-Canadian family — the Elmaağaclı family — turned it into something solid and beautiful: premium tile and stone, with manufacturing in İzmir. The land in the name, the craftsmanship in the product. It fits.

Some domains find their rightful owner eventually. This one did.

Mersina is what they called Mersin before the maps were redrawn. A port city on the eastern Mediterranean, ancient beyond counting — Hittites, Persians, Romans, Ottomans, all passed through. The longest seafront in Turkey. The smell of citrus and diesel.

This domain carried that name before the city fully forgot it. One day it may carry something again.

Rakı. Anise. Ice. A little water that turns it white. Lion's milk, they call it. You don't drink rakı quickly. You sit with it. You talk. The night gets longer.

The domain is raki.com — clean, simple, the standard spelling for international audiences. The drink itself is always spelled Rakı, with the dotless ı of Turkish. Both are correct. One travels better.