In Turkey, life begins to imitate the Web.

A ground-breaking website in Turkey is changing the way that people think and could be the catalyst that creates a confession society there.

Turkey may have produced Mahir, but its Internet community is still young. There are an estimated 2 million regular Internet users in a population of around 66 million, and e-commerce is just getting off the ground. In this climate, a web phenomenon was born and after two and a half years, it has started to bleed into daily life.

Ersan Ozer, then a television reporter, wanted to create a site that he could manage in his spare time, whose content would be driven by the sites visitors, not by him. The concept he came up with was simple -- confess at the site and feel as innocent as a babe. He created Itiraf.com (from the Turkish word itiraf" -- confession) in October 1999. Word of mouth brought people to the site, and after 3 months the site was receiving 3500 visitors a day.

annabel lee; Female, 30; Eskisehir
I tried to make yogurt using breast milk. It did not work.

This caught the attention of EBI, an Internet company that was started in 1999 to host an e-commerce site called ideefixe.com. They offered Ozer a partnership and hosted the site. In October 2000, after the site had been online for a year, it was receiving 10 thousand visitors a day. Ozer left his television job and added interactivity to the site, allowing visitors to send private messages to people whose confessions were published on the site. This, says Ozer, was a key element in building the sense of community that is so central to the success of the site.

Today, 50 thousand people visit itiraf.com every day. Around 1000 people confess, and 4000 messages are exchanged. A compilation of the best confessions is being released in book form, and plans for an English-language site are underway. And now the concept has stepped out into the real" world, and is reaching the other 64 million people in Turkey, who do not use the Internet. Earlier this year, a TV spin-off of the website was created, called Itiraf --a show where people could come in and confess. Now there are plans for another show and Turkeys intellectuals are beginning to wonder where this is headed.

There has always been a lot of curiosity about celebrities here in Turkey, and magazines full of paparazzi photos have been popular for years. But the idea of taking an interest in ordinary peoples lives, already so prevalent in the United States -- this idea of a confession society" -- is new to Turkey. Now, celebrity biographies are popping up everywhere, and a TV show called Someone is Watching Us," Turkeys answer to Big Brother" is on all day long, on its own TV station as Turkey discovers its voyeuristic streak.

All this because of one little web site?

sourwords; female 28; Istanbul
I am married to a wonderful man with very large eyebrows -- he has been teased about it ever since he was a kid. We have an infant son now. And he has his fathers eyebrows. I really dont want our child to be teased for his whole life the way his father was. So I have started plucking his eyebrows because I have heard that if I pluck his eyebrows now I can change them forever. I am afraid of being found out, though. I dont want to hurt my husbands feelings, and if his mother found out I am sure she would think I am torturing our child.

http://www.itiraf.com
For further information, or more translated confessions, contact:
Siobhan Wilde
swilde@confideinme.com
Phone: (TURKEY +90) 212/296-7500, X161

realconfessor; female, 21; Istanbul
When I go to take a dump, I take all of my clothes off. I dont know why -- I have done it ever since I was a kid. It is just a habit, I guess. Nobody knows that I have this habit -- I have even tried to cure myself of this. For example, I tried to leave my bra on, but I could not stand it -- I ended up tearing it off so I could just go.

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