Esquire: Kaybedenler, Hırs and Public Image

Esquire: Kaybedenler, Hırs and Public Image

Esquire Türkiye — March 2011
Interview by Ege Görgün

In March 2011, Nejat İşler entered one of the most culturally important periods of his career.

Kaybedenler Kulübü had just reached cinemas.

The film was built around Kaan and Mete, two men associated with an unconventional radio program, late-night conversations, relationships, alcohol, music and a refusal to fit comfortably into conventional ideas of success.

For İşler, the role of Kaan Çaydamlı was particularly important because the public image surrounding the actor and the mythology surrounding the character could easily be confused.

Both appeared independent.

Both seemed suspicious of conventional ambition.

Both attracted a strong male following.

Both were connected in the public imagination with women, nightlife and resistance to ordinary social expectations.

The Esquire interview catches İşler exactly at the moment when these two identities begin moving dangerously close together.

Interviewing the Man Behind the Persona

Ege Görgün begins from an observation that would become increasingly familiar around Nejat İşler.

İşler does not particularly enjoy interviews.

He accepts them because they are part of the profession.

This is important because it continues the tension already visible in 2010.

İşler wants professional work to be public.

He does not necessarily want the person behind the work to become endlessly available.

Years later, Görgün recalled that his initial impression was of someone who would rather finish the job and then return to his own life. The actual interview largely confirmed that impression.

For İşler, interviews become repetitive.

The same film produces similar questions.

Similar questions produce similar answers.

Eventually the process becomes automatic.

This apparently minor complaint reveals something larger.

Celebrity culture rewards constant repetition of a recognizable self.

The actor is expected not only to play roles but also to perform a stable public identity between roles.

İşler has always seemed uncomfortable with that second performance.

What Makes Someone a “Loser”?

The film’s title inevitably leads to a personal question.

What prevents Nejat İşler himself from being a loser?

His answer is revealing.

He says that he has never had a strong hunger for many things.

This is one of the clearest early statements of a philosophy that will become much more developed later.

Conventional success depends partly on appetite.

More money.

More property.

More status.

More visibility.

More victories.

İşler repeatedly presents himself as someone whose appetite for these things is limited.

That does not mean he has no ambition.

The interview shows exactly where ambition does appear.

The Football Exception

Football changes him.

On the football field, he says, he is competitive.

He wants to win.

He can play for hours.

He becomes angry when he loses and expects everyone around him to play properly.

This creates one of the most interesting contradictions in the interview.

In ordinary life:

low appetite for conventional achievement.

On the football field:

intense desire to win.

This contrast will become more meaningful later when football moves from recreation into actual responsibility through Gümüşlükspor.

In 2011, football is a place where İşler releases aggression and competitiveness.

By 2015, football will become something else:

• community,
• organization,
• responsibility,
• children’s training,
• local identity.

So the football theme does not remain static.

It evolves with him.

Losing Is Contextual

The title Kaybedenler Kulübü invites a simplistic division between winners and losers.

The interview resists that.

If someone does not strongly desire what society calls success, what exactly does losing mean?

A person who wants wealth and fails to obtain it may feel defeated.

But what about someone who does not organize life around accumulation in the first place?

İşler’s answer suggests that the category of “loser” depends on the game being played.

This becomes increasingly important in his later life.

By 2017 he will speak about using money to buy time rather than property.

That philosophy makes sense only if conventional measures of winning have already lost some of their authority.

The seeds are present here.

Kaybedenler Kulübü as a Generational Story

Another interview from the same release period gives useful context.

Speaking with Sibel Ateş Yengin shortly before the film’s release, İşler described Kaybedenler Kulübü as a photograph of lost years.

The discussion moves back to the 1990s and compares that cultural environment with the present.

This matters because Kaan and Mete are not simply two unusual men.

They represent a specific urban subculture.

Radio.

Second-hand books.

Music.

Night conversations.

Bars.

A form of male friendship.

A resistance to polished professional identities.

For audiences who recognized that world, the movie offered not simply entertainment but memory.

Kaan Çaydamlı and Nejat İşler

The danger of the role is obvious.

Kaan was already a real cultural figure before the film.

Nejat İşler then played him using a public persona that seemed unusually compatible with the character.

The result encouraged audiences to blur distinctions.

Kaan became Nejat.

Nejat became Kaan.

This process was strengthened by the public mythology around İşler:

• nightlife,
• relationships,
• media hostility,
• unconventional masculinity,
• independence,
• alcohol,
• resistance to authority.

But the interviews suggest that the overlap is never complete.

The actor may share certain attitudes with the character.

That does not make the actor the character.

This is another version of the same conflict that began in 2003.

Then:

“leading man” was an external label.

Now:

“loser / rebellious male outsider” becomes another external label.

The label has changed.

The problem has not.

Women and the Construction of Masculinity

The Esquire interview attracted attention partly because İşler talked about women.

The press headline focused on his statement that he was not especially aggressive or forward when approaching women.

This is interesting because his growing public image suggested almost the opposite.

The Nejat İşler persona was increasingly interpreted through conventional signs of masculine confidence:

• attractive,
• rebellious,
• sexually experienced,
• emotionally distant,
• socially fearless.

Yet İşler describes himself as relatively passive in initiating romantic contact.

Again we see the difference between projected masculinity and personal description.

This tension will become explicit in 2018 when he rejects the “delikanlı” image attached to him.

The Birth of the Anti-Hero Persona

After Barda, İşler had already moved away from conventional leading-man territory.

Kaybedenler Kulübü completes another stage of that movement.

But there is an important difference.

The violent character in Barda creates distance.

Kaan creates identification.

Audiences do not necessarily want to be the Barda character.

Many viewers do want to identify with Kaan.

That makes Kaybedenler Kulübü far more powerful in constructing Nejat İşler’s public mythology.

The actor becomes associated with a particular kind of masculine outsider:

intelligent,

wounded,

ironic,

sexually free,

culturally literate,

suspicious of conventional success.

For some audiences, this becomes aspirational.

A Problematic Kind of Freedom

The film’s version of freedom is not simple.

Kaan’s independence produces pleasures.

But it also creates costs.

Emotional distance.

Repetition.

Difficulty sustaining intimacy.

A life organized around avoiding certain forms of responsibility.

The film itself contains this ambiguity.

Yet popular culture often extracts only the attractive surface.

Freedom becomes:

bars,

women,

radio,

night,

not caring what people think.

The cost of that freedom is easier to ignore.

This will matter when İşler returns to the character in 2018.

By then, both actor and character are older.

The question is no longer simply:

Is this lifestyle attractive?

It becomes:

What happens when a lifestyle becomes a permanent identity?

Fame and the Paradox of Kaybedenler Kulübü

There is also a remarkable irony.

In 2010, İşler publicly talked about wanting to get out of the professional market.

One year later, Kaybedenler Kulübü made his cultural image even larger.

He became more recognizable precisely by playing a man associated with rejecting conventional definitions of success.

The “anti-celebrity” became more famous.

The “loser” became an icon.

This paradox is central to Nejat İşler’s public story.

Every attempt to escape a fixed identity seems capable of producing a new fixed identity.

No Hunger for More

The most philosophically important part of the interview may therefore be his statement about appetite.

He does not describe himself as morally superior because he wants less.

He simply says he has never felt hungry for many things.

This is different from rejecting success after failing to achieve it.

By 2011, he has already achieved substantial visibility.

The rejection comes from inside success.

That gives the statement more weight.

From Low Ambition to Buying Time

Six years later, this attitude will become much more precise.

In 2017, İşler will explain that his goal is to buy time.

Money matters because money can create independence from constant work.

Seen retrospectively, the philosophy forms a coherent progression:

2011: I do not have a strong hunger for many things.

↓

2017: If I have enough, I can buy back my time.

The first statement is psychological.

The second becomes practical.

Football as the Exception — and Later the Rule

The football material also gains new meaning when read longitudinally.

In 2011, the football field is where İşler allows himself conventional ambition.

Winning matters.

Losing hurts.

Several years later, however, Gümüşlükspor forces him to experience football from the opposite position.

He is no longer only the player shouting because he wants to win.

He becomes the person responsible for:

• budgets,
• organization,
• children,
• facilities,
• administration,
• maintaining a club.

The competitive pleasure of football becomes social responsibility.

That transformation will be important in the 2015 files.

A Useful Comparison with 2003

The contrast with the first archive entry is again instructive.

2003: the industry calls him a leading man.

He replies: I am an actor.

2011: audiences begin associating him with Kaan Çaydamlı and the mythology of the “loser.”

Once again, his actual statements are less theatrical.

He is not presenting himself as the leader of some alternative male philosophy.

He mostly describes:

• limited ambition,
• ordinary insecurity,
• football competitiveness,
• discomfort with interviews,
• a complicated relationship with public attention.

The cultural mythology is larger than the man describing himself.

A Useful Comparison with 2018

The 2018 sequel, Kaybedenler Kulübü Yolda, will give us an unusually valuable opportunity.

Seven years later, Nejat İşler returns to Kaan.

By then:

• he has survived a major health crisis,
• changed his relationship with Istanbul,
• spent years in Gümüşlük,
• become involved in local football,
• written a book,
• publicly reconsidered time and property.

So the same character can be observed through two radically different periods of the actor’s life.

2011 shows the birth of the mythology.

2018 allows İşler to look back at it.

Why This Interview Matters

The March 2011 Esquire interview captures the moment when Kaybedenler Kulübü begins transforming Nejat İşler from a respected actor with an unconventional image into a cultural anti-hero.

The most important element is the contrast between mythology and self-description.

The mythology says:

Nejat İşler is the embodiment of the rebellious loser.

The interview gives a quieter picture:

a man who dislikes repetitive publicity, has limited hunger for conventional success, becomes genuinely ambitious mainly on a football field and is less aggressive in relationships than his public image suggests.

The gap is important.

It reminds us that Nejat İşler’s career is repeatedly shaped by characters that audiences use to explain the actor himself.

Kaybedenler Kulübü becomes one of the strongest examples.

And the statement that he has never had much hunger for many things becomes increasingly significant when read beside his later rejection of accumulation and his desire to “buy time.”