Başkan Olunca Bu İşler Ne Kadar Zormuş Dedim

Başkan Olunca Bu İşler Ne Kadar Zormuş Dedim

Yeni Yüzyıl P — 28 December 2015

By the end of 2015, Nejat İşler had entered a role very different from the ones that had made him famous.

He was now the president of Gümüşlükspor.

This was not a film.

It was not a symbolic honorary position created for publicity.

It involved an actual local football club, young players, budgets, organization and responsibility.

The man who had spent years talking about escaping the professional entertainment industry had entered another institution.

But this institution operated according to very different values.

The key word was:

amateurism.

From Actor to Club President

İşler had officially been elected president of Gümüşlükspor in May 2015.

At the time, he immediately talked about opening a football school and developing young players from Gümüşlük and Bodrum rather than simply importing talent from outside.

That detail is important.

The project was not only about winning matches.

It was about building something locally.

The club would try to create its own players.

Children would be part of the structure.

Football would become connected to the place rather than simply consumed as entertainment.

“This Is Much Harder Than It Looks”

The most memorable line from the December interview comes from İşler’s discovery of what leadership actually means.

After becoming president, he says he realized how difficult the job was.

The phrase was characteristically direct:

“Bu işler ne kadar zormuş lan.”

The importance of the sentence lies in its lack of heroism.

He does not present himself as the enlightened celebrity who arrives to save a small football club.

He presents himself as someone who underestimated the work.

That makes the story much more credible.

Responsibility Is Different from Image

Nejat İşler’s public identity had often been built around independence.

The outsider.

The man who does not care what others think.

The man who leaves when he wants.

The man who dislikes systems.

Running a football club demands almost the opposite behavior.

You cannot simply walk away whenever something becomes irritating.

There are:

• players,
• coaches,
• parents,
• supporters,
• finances,
• facilities,
• administrators.

Other people depend on decisions.

Freedom becomes responsibility.

That is a major development in the archive.

Amateurism as a Principle

İşler repeatedly emphasizes that he likes the amateur character of the club.

He even says he does not want the club to become professional.

At first this sounds strange.

Why would the president of a football club not want professional status?

Because for İşler, professionalism does not automatically mean improvement.

Professionalization can also introduce:

• larger financial pressure,
• careerism,
• commercial priorities,
• external control,
• loss of local identity.

This makes his attachment to amateur football particularly interesting when compared with his criticisms of television.

The Opposite of the Television Industry

The contrast is almost perfect.

The television industry he criticized in 2010 was:

large,

commercial,

time-consuming,

professionally competitive,

built around constant production.

Gümüşlükspor was:

small,

local,

amateur,

community-based,

dependent on volunteers and relationships.

One system represented the professional market he wanted to escape.

The other represented a type of collective activity he was willing to enter voluntarily.

This suggests that İşler was not opposed to work.

He was opposed to a particular kind of work.

Amateur Does Not Mean Unimportant

The word “amateur” often suggests lower quality.

For İşler, it appears to mean something closer to:

doing something because you care about it rather than because it has become a market.

That is an important distinction.

The club still requires seriousness.

Training matters.

Organization matters.

Winning matters.

But economic growth does not have to become the final purpose.

This is surprisingly consistent with İşler’s attitude toward his own career.

He wants to act seriously.

He does not necessarily want maximum career expansion.

Children and Local Development

The football school makes the project more than a personal hobby.

When elected, İşler said the goal was to discover and develop talented young players from Gümüşlük and Bodrum through their own football schools.

This introduces another long-term theme:

leaving something behind.

Before his health crisis, much of the public narrative around Nejat İşler was individual.

His roles.

His nightlife.

His relationships.

His career.

After 2014, more collective concerns begin appearing.

Football.

Young players.

Community.

Teaching.

Writing.

The important question gradually becomes less:

What can I experience?

and more:

What can I contribute?

This Prepares the 2016 Philosophy

The following year, in the Uğur Vardan interview, İşler will explain this change much more directly.

After confronting the possibility of death, he says he began asking what would remain if he had died.

His conclusion was that he did not want to continue living only for himself.

Gümüşlükspor becomes one of his examples.

That later interview gives philosophical language to what we can already see here in practice.

Football Before Gümüşlükspor

Football had always mattered to İşler.

In the 2011 Esquire interview, he described football as one of the few areas where he became strongly competitive.

He wanted to win.

He became angry when teammates did not take the game seriously.

At that time, football was mainly personal.

A space for energy and competition.

By 2015, football has changed meaning.

He is no longer merely playing.

He is responsible for creating the conditions in which others can play.

This is a significant transformation.

Player Versus President

As a player:

the question is whether you perform.

As president:

the question is whether the entire system works.

That difference explains his surprise.

Leadership makes invisible labor visible.

Scheduling.

Money.

Administration.

Planning.

People.

Problems that cannot be solved with individual talent.

An actor can prepare his own performance.

A club president cannot run a club alone.

The Anti-Hero Becomes an Administrator

There is also a cultural irony.

A large part of Nejat İşler’s popularity came from anti-establishment characters.

Kaan.

Ercüment.

The rebellious outsider.

Yet here he is:

chairing an organization.

Running meetings.

Building a football school.

Thinking about institutional continuity.

The anti-hero has become an administrator.

But perhaps this is less contradictory than it seems.

The real question has always been:

what kind of institution?

İşler seems much more willing to participate when he believes the institution belongs to a community rather than a market.

Fenerbahçe and Football Identity

The interview also includes his strong attachment to Fenerbahçe and his views about football administration.

These comments received considerable media attention, especially his defense of Aziz Yıldırım.

Those statements are part of the interview, but they are not the most important archival material.

The deeper value lies in seeing how football operates in his life.

It is emotional.

Competitive.

Social.

Local.

And, by 2015, administrative.

Gümüşlük as Participation

The Gümüşlük story is often described as retreat.

Nejat İşler leaves Istanbul.

Moves toward Bodrum.

Reduces television work.

Lives more quietly.

But the football club forces us to qualify that narrative.

He does not withdraw from society.

He changes the scale at which he participates in it.

Istanbul celebrity culture becomes less important.

A local football club becomes more important.

That is not disappearance.

It is redistribution of attention.

From Fame to Usefulness

There is a particularly interesting reversal here.

Celebrity creates symbolic value.

People know your name.

They recognize your face.

They follow your work.

But symbolic value does not automatically make anything function better.

A football club tests something different:

can your visibility become useful?

Can celebrity attract resources?

Attention?

Support?

Can it create opportunities for children?

This seems to be part of what İşler tries to do with Gümüşlükspor.

Refusing the “Role Model” Position

Around this same Gümüşlükspor period, İşler would explicitly reject being presented as a role model.

That is consistent with everything else in the archive.

He does not seem comfortable with moral elevation.

He is willing to do something.

He is less willing to become a symbol of goodness because he did it.

This resistance matters.

The rebellious persona is a simplification.

But the heroic benefactor persona would be another simplification.

İşler seems suspicious of both.

A Different Kind of Success

The club also offers a different measure of success.

Celebrity success:

ratings,

box office,

awards,

visibility,

money.

Local football success:

children training,

a functioning organization,

supporters,

a team surviving,

a community participating.

This alternative scale fits the questions he had already raised about conventional success in 2011 and 2012.

Perhaps “success” becomes easier to understand when it is attached to something concrete.

From Independence to Interdependence

One of the most important changes in this period is the movement from independence toward interdependence.

The earlier public Nejat is often described as:

I do what I want.

The Gümüşlükspor Nejat exists inside:

we are trying to make something work.

This may be one of the deepest post-2014 shifts.

Not simply healthier living.

Not simply leaving Istanbul.

But a stronger willingness to invest time in structures that depend on other people.

The Limits of Romanticizing Gümüşlük

At the same time, the archive should not turn Gümüşlük into a perfect utopia.

Running the club is difficult.

Money is difficult.

Organization is difficult.

People are difficult.

İşler says this openly.

That is part of why the story is valuable.

The alternative to the entertainment industry is not effortless freedom.

It contains different responsibilities.

He appears to prefer those responsibilities because he considers them more meaningful.

A Useful Comparison with 2022

Years later, İşler will eventually close his Gümüşlük home as Bodrum becomes increasingly crowded and the environment changes.

This proves that Gümüşlük was never a sacred final destination.

It was a structure that worked for a period.

The football years therefore should be understood historically rather than mythologically.

They represent a particular answer to a particular question:

How can I spend my time differently?

Why This Interview Matters

The December 2015 Yeni Yüzyıl P interview is important because it reveals a version of Nejat İşler that his earlier celebrity mythology could not easily predict.

He is no longer merely escaping an industry.

He is trying to build something.

Gümüşlükspor places him inside:

• leadership,
• administration,
• responsibility,
• youth development,
• community.

His attachment to amateurism is especially significant.

It suggests that his criticism of professional culture is not a rejection of seriousness or hard work.

It is a rejection of the idea that every meaningful activity must eventually become a market.

Perhaps the most revealing moment is also the least polished:

“Bu işler ne kadar zormuş lan.”

He discovers that responsibility is harder than rebellion.

And he continues anyway.