In the remote villages of Turkey's Eastern Anatolia region, love sometimes manifests itself through a secret elopement that clashes with tradition. In this photography project, I focus on the stories of young women who voluntarily elope and marry their loved ones despite their families' opposition, as well as some of the stories of men that I think are unique. In doing so, I adopt a post-documentary approach that transcends the limits of classical documentary photography. I understand time not as a moment, but as a process; I try to overcome the temporal discontinuity of the classical documentary approach. Because I take into account that meaning is also a temporal process. By blending reality and fiction, I aim to reveal the deep emotional world behind what may seem like ordinary events. My photographs include both real portraits of women who have recently eloped and staged reenactments of dramatic past events. By blending real stories from the past with creative reenactments, I expand the witnessing power of photography with the possibilities of imagination. For example, the story of a young woman who left home on the pretext of dropping her brother to school and never returned was reconstructed through both the aesthetics of photography and the language of narrative. Thus, the viewer experiences that photography can not only capture the visible but also depict the invisible. One of the inspirations for this project was my discovery of a handwritten diary kept over the years by a village headman. The diary also included cases of elopement, often only mentioned in a few sentences, but with a deep emotional intensity between the lines. These simple lines contained traces of courage in love, the tension of family ties, and the beating hearts that dared to defy societal norms. They planted the seed of my desire to breathe new life into stories on the verge of being forgotten. However, this project does not only focus on what is written in the diary. It also explores what is going on beyond the stories in the diary. Instead of focusing only on what happened in a single village, it focuses on the region as a whole. My photographic series explores the themes of marriage and love together with tradition, individual will and social pressure. The voluntary elopement of a young woman to meet the man she loves is on the one hand an expression of love and the right to free choice, and on the other a silent rebellion against the unwritten rules of the culture in which she was raised. Two basic dynamics stand out as the main reasons for these elopements: firstly, the male side's desire to avoid the rising costs of the wedding; and secondly, family opposition, especially from the girl's father who opposes the marriage. Through this long-term project, I hope that these women will be seen not only as “runaways” but also as individuals who resist, hope, take risks and sometimes try to write their own destiny. These escapes, which are as freedom as the sky for some, end with heavy costs for others. But all of them carry the search for a strong and simple life caught between the inner voice of the human being and the voice of society. As a result, by re-enacting these events and emotions that have been forgotten over the years, I aim to create a link between the past and the present, and to bring the echoes of these courageous love stories to today's audience.