Bundan Sonra Artık Kendim İçin Hiçbir Şey Yapmayacağım

Bundan Sonra Artık Kendim İçin Hiçbir Şey Yapmayacağım

Hürriyet — 22 May 2016
Interview by Uğur Vardan

By May 2016, Nejat İşler had moved beyond simply recovering from illness.

He had begun giving the experience a meaning.

Two years earlier, in the OT interview, he had avoided turning his health crisis into the center of the conversation.

When asked about it, he preferred to talk about good things.

Now the tone was different.

The experience had become part of a broader question:

What should the remaining part of a life be used for?

Speaking with Uğur Vardan around the publication of his first book, Gerçek Hesap Bu!, İşler described the thought that had followed him out of the hospital.

He imagined the possibility that he might have died.

Then he asked himself what he would have left behind.

His answer disturbed him.

He had worked.

He had built a career.

But, in his own judgment, that did not feel sufficient.

The conclusion was radical:

“Bundan sonra artık kendim için hiçbir şey yapmayacağım.”

From now on, he would no longer do everything only for himself.

The Question After Survival

This is one of the clearest moments of transformation in the entire archive.

Importantly, the change is not:

I nearly died, so now I will enjoy myself more.

It is almost the opposite.

İşler asks whether a life built mainly around one’s own work, pleasure and career is enough.

The answer he gives is:

no.

That does not mean he suddenly rejects individual pleasure.

Nor does it mean that every later action becomes altruistic.

The statement is better understood as a change in direction.

He wants more of his time to produce something outside himself.

Gümüşlükspor, Teaching and the Book

İşler immediately gives three examples:

• Gümüşlükspor,
• teaching at a university,
• Gerçek Hesap Bu!.

He describes all three as expressions of the same reflex.

That is important because these activities look very different.

Football administration.

Teaching.

Writing.

Yet İşler sees them as connected.

Their common feature is that they extend beyond the private experience of being an actor.

The Meaning of Gümüşlükspor Changes

The previous archive entry showed İşler discovering how difficult it was to run a football club.

At that stage, Gümüşlükspor could be understood as:

local participation,

amateurism,

football,

community.

The 2016 interview adds another layer.

Now İşler explicitly connects it with mortality.

The football club becomes part of an answer to the question:

What remains after me?

That does not have to mean permanent monuments.

It may simply mean that another person benefited from time he gave.

A child trained.

A student learned something.

A club continued.

A book generated money for the club.

The scale is modest.

That seems appropriate to İşler’s general distrust of heroic self-presentation.

The Book Is Not Only a Book

Gerçek Hesap Bu! was İşler’s first book.

It collected writing produced partly for magazines such as OT, together with additional texts prepared for the volume.

In another surviving version of the interview, İşler explains that he had been writing for as long as he could remember and that the idea of turning these writings into a book emerged later rather than being the original plan.

But one detail gives the project a different meaning:

the proceeds were intended for Gümüşlükspor.

So writing and football become economically connected.

A personal creative act finances a collective institution.

This is perhaps the clearest practical expression of the philosophy he describes in the interview.

Writing Was There Before Acting

The conversation also complicates the idea that Nejat İşler suddenly became a writer after his illness.

He says that writing had been present from the beginning.

He had always written.

The later book is therefore not the birth of a new identity.

It is the return of an older one.

This will become especially important in the 2019 Socrates interview, where he talks in much greater detail about childhood writing, theatre texts, the typewriter and the interruption caused by his acting career.

The post-illness period does not invent writer Nejat.

It gives him more space.

Mortality Creates Reordering

This is a useful distinction.

Before the illness, İşler already had several recurring concerns:

• too much work,
• lack of privacy,
• dislike of the television system,
• uncertainty about conventional success,
• desire for more independence.

The 2014 crisis does not create these ideas from nothing.

What it does is reorder them.

Before:

I do not want this system to control my life.

After:

What should I do with the life I control?

This is a much deeper question.

Panic as a Residue of the Hospital

İşler says that he now makes many decisions in panic and connects that tendency to the hospital period.

This is revealing because it prevents the post-crisis philosophy from becoming too calm or polished.

He does not emerge from illness as a perfectly serene sage.

There is urgency.

Perhaps even fear.

The experience leaves psychological pressure behind.

This produces an interesting combination:

live more slowly, decide more urgently.

The Urgency to Do Something

If death can interrupt life unexpectedly, postponement becomes harder to justify.

That helps explain the cluster of activities:

football,

teaching,

writing.

These are not necessarily part of a carefully designed long-term plan.

İşler himself describes the decisions as panic-driven.

The important thing is movement.

Do something.

Leave something.

Use the available time.

Acting as Observation

The interview also contains one of the clearest descriptions of İşler’s acting method.

He says that he has always been an observer.

Even as a child, he watched people.

Later, while working in a clothing business in Bomonti, he remembers seeing actor İzzet Günay and paying close attention to his movements.

This is a small anecdote, but it reveals something central about his profession.

İşler does not describe acting primarily through:

emotion,

inspiration,

star quality.

He describes:

observation.

Looking Before Performing

This idea fits his later comments about playing dark characters.

To create a person, first observe how people work.

Gestures.

Movement.

Rhythm.

Behavior.

Contradiction.

For İşler, acting appears less like showing the self and more like collecting other people.

This is especially interesting when compared with his public persona.

Celebrity culture constantly asks:

Who is Nejat İşler?

His profession requires him to ask:

Who are these other people?

A Different Relationship with Self

That contrast may help explain his discomfort with celebrity.

Acting, as he describes it, points attention outward.

Celebrity points attention inward.

The actor studies people.

The celebrity is studied by people.

One process may feel creatively productive.

The other can feel invasive.

Why Music Fascinates Him

One of the most revealing parts of the interview comes when İşler imagines being a musician.

He says that if he had been a musician, perhaps he would not have needed anything else.

A musician can make one song and place love, hatred and emotion directly inside it.

This tells us something about how he sees acting.

Acting is indirect.

The actor usually speaks through somebody else.

The character’s words.

The character’s body.

The character’s situation.

Music, in İşler’s imagination, offers direct emotional expression.

Acting, Writing and Music

This creates a useful triangle.

Acting: observe others and inhabit them.

Writing: transform your experience into language.

Music: express feeling directly.

İşler became famous through the first.

After 2014, the second becomes increasingly important.

The third remains an imagined alternative.

This gives his creative identity more depth than “actor who later wrote books.”

Gerçek Hesap Bu!

The title itself is appropriate.

“Gerçek hesap bu” suggests a final accounting.

What actually counts?

Career?

Money?

Recognition?

What remains?

The hospital experience appears to force İşler into precisely this kind of accounting.

He had worked successfully for years.

Yet when imagining death, he felt the balance sheet was insufficient.

So the calculation changes.

Time spent for others begins to count differently.

Not a Saintly Transformation

There is a danger in interpreting the statement too literally.

“From now on I will do nothing for myself” is rhetorically absolute.

No person actually lives entirely for others.

Nor does İşler present his later life as self-sacrifice.

He continues:

acting,

earning money,

traveling,

enjoying personal life.

The archival value of the statement lies not in literal perfection but in directional change.

The center of gravity shifts.

From Independence to Contribution

Earlier Nejat İşler mythology emphasized independence.

Do what you want.

Ignore expectations.

Leave the system.

Protect your privacy.

The post-2014 version introduces another concept:

contribution.

Freedom alone is no longer enough.

Once you have obtained some control over your life, what do you do with it?

This is a significant maturation of the earlier philosophy.

A Useful Comparison with 2010

The contrast with 2010 is particularly strong.

2010:
I want to leave the market.

The problem is external.

The system takes too much.

2016:
If I had died, what had I done?

The problem becomes internal.

Even if the system disappears, a second question remains:

What is the purpose of the freedom you gained?

That makes the 2016 interview more than a continuation.

It is a new stage.

A Useful Comparison with 2015

The 2015 Gümüşlükspor interviews showed behavior before explanation.

İşler:

• moved away from series,
• invested time in a local club,
• became involved with young players.

In 2016, he supplies the philosophy behind those decisions.

The sequence is useful.

People do not always develop theories first and then act.

Sometimes they act and later understand what those actions meant.

A Useful Comparison with 2017

One year later, he will introduce another important idea:

buying time.

These two philosophies should be read together.

2016 asks:

Who should benefit from my remaining time?

2017 asks:

How can I make more of that time belong to me?

They are complementary.

First obtain control over time.

Then decide how to use it.

A Useful Comparison with 2019

The writing theme will become much richer in the 2019 Socrates interview.

By then, İşler will describe writing as something that existed from childhood and was interrupted by acting.

The 2016 book therefore marks an important return.

The hospital crisis creates time.

Time allows writing to return.

Writing produces a book.

The book supports Gümüşlükspor.

A personal interruption produces a chain of outward consequences.

Why This Interview Matters

The 22 May 2016 Uğur Vardan interview is one of the most important documents in Nejat İşler’s archive because it gives explicit meaning to the post-2014 transformation.

Earlier records show that İşler already wanted:

• less television,
• less celebrity pressure,
• more privacy,
• more control over his time.

But this interview introduces a new principle.

After imagining what would remain if he had died, he decides that a life devoted mainly to himself is not enough.

Gümüşlükspor, teaching and Gerçek Hesap Bu! become expressions of a new direction.

The change can be summarized as:

from withdrawal to contribution.

Leaving the system was no longer the final objective.

The next question was what to do with the freedom created by leaving it.