Soylu had no ambitions for a career in the sport when she began playing tennis at 6, but as her results improved, she set her sights higher.

“My parents weren’t pushing me this way,” Soylu said. “As I grew up, I was getting results in Turkey, so I started to travel around the world. And suddenly I said, I think I can be good at this. So far it has worked out well for me, and I have big dreams and big aims, and I’ll really work hard to get to them.”

Soylu won the girls’ doubles title at the 2014 United States Open. Last month, on the same day that Buyukakcay won the singles title in Istanbul, Soylu claimed the doubles title, becoming the first Turkish woman to win a tour doubles title.

Ipek Senoglu, a retired Turkish player who reached the top 60 of the WTA doubles rankings in 2009, said the three-year stint that the WTA year-end championships had in Istanbul between 2011 and 2013 made tennis dreams more tangible for a younger generation.

“It allowed our own players to watch the top players and realize that top players are human, too,” Senoglu said. “It allowed them to believe that if they work hard enough, they can be one day at the same place.”

Senoglu compared the two emerging players with two top Turkish soccer clubs, Galatasaray and Fenerbahce, whose intense rivalry has propelled them upward.

“I believe having to compete with each other makes you push harder,” Senoglu said. “And at the same time, it divides the pressure that’s on your shoulders as well, which helps at difficult moments.”