You studied music at the State Conservatory. You were a soprano with a future. Why did you turn to pop music?
When I was studying at the Conservatory, I took my classes very seriously and worked very hard. I pictured myself being an opera singer for the rest of my life. But the fact that opera in Turkey is a state-run institution was a cause of great disappointment to me. Your love dies. I can't live without singing. Around that time life opened new doors for me to make other kinds of music. I started singing advertising jingles, I formed my own orchestra and sang jazz. While I was singing jingles, I met all kinds of people from the music market. One of them was Onno Tunç. It was thanks to him that I started singing vocals on Sezen Aksu albums. They proposed that we work together, and suddenly I found myself in pop music. Sezen suggested that I do an album. It just happened naturally.
You broke Turkey's streak of bad luck at the Eurovision Song Contest? How did it feel?
Actually I set out at first with the idea that it was just my career, my responsibility. But over there it turned into a big and serious responsibility.