Hayatı Ufaltmak

Hayatı Ufaltmak

Milliyet Sanat — 19 October 2021
Interview by Asu Maro

By 2021, Nejat İşler had found a working model that came surprisingly close to the life he had been describing for more than a decade.

No endless television seasons.

No permanent leading role.

Limited projects.

Digital productions with a defined beginning and end.

Few fixed obligations.

A deliberately smaller life.

Asu Maro summarizes this late-career structure with unusual precision: İşler has built a career around guest appearances, projects that do not extend indefinitely, and a life reduced enough to let him refuse work he does not want.

This interview is important because many ideas that once sounded like rebellion now look like a functioning system.

“Hayatı Ufaltmak”

The central late-career idea is not expansion.

It is reduction.

Most successful careers are described through growth:

more money,

more responsibility,

larger projects,

greater visibility,

more property.

İşler moves in the opposite direction.

His freedom depends partly on keeping the number of things that can control him relatively small.

That is what makes “hayatı ufaltmak” — making life smaller — such an important phrase for understanding him.

Fewer Obligations Create More Choice

İşler explains this practically.

He is approaching fifty.

He has not married.

He has no children.

He has deliberately avoided some of the obligations that would make refusing work more difficult.

He recognizes that other people may not have the same freedom because they have families, rent, children or other responsibilities.

This is important because he does not present his freedom as pure courage.

It has material conditions.

Freedom Is Designed

This makes his philosophy more realistic.

Saying:

I do whatever I want

is easy.

Building a life in which saying no has fewer consequences is harder.

İşler has gradually reduced the structures that can force him to accept work.

Freedom becomes partly architectural.

The Ideal Television Role Is Temporary

The interview contains one of the clearest explanations of why Ercüment Çözer fits him so well professionally.

When Behzat Ç. first offered the character, İşler had already decided that he did not want another conventional television lead.

His preferred maximum was around eight episodes.

Why eight?

Because eight weeks roughly resembles the time required for a large film production.

This is a very precise solution to an old problem.

Not Anti-Television

Again, the archive should avoid saying that Nejat İşler simply hates television.

He does not.

He dislikes television that becomes indefinite.

His preferred structure is:

enter,

play,

finish,

leave.

Ercüment allows exactly that.

Behzat Ç. as the Ideal Exception

The character therefore represents both artistic and professional freedom.

Artistically:

Ercüment is unusual, dark and playful.

Professionally:

the role does not require İşler to surrender his entire year to one series.

The exception works because it respects the rule.

Digital Platforms Finally Match the Old Demand

By 2021, digital production has changed the practical landscape.

İşler contrasts these projects with traditional weekly television.

On a digital production, there is time.

The project can be completed.

The edit can be reviewed.

If necessary, a scene can even be shot again.

Traditional television may still be filming immediately before broadcast.

This is almost the exact answer to his complaints from 2010.

Eleven Years Later, the Industry Partly Changes

The chronology is now extremely clear.

2010:
The television production model is inhuman.

2015:
Series work is effectively over for him.

2021:
Digital structures offer shorter, finite projects and make serialized work attractive again.

The medium did not fundamentally change his mind.

The production conditions did.

“Everyone Should Get Bored and Leave”

Asu Maro points out that İşler’s departures are often interpreted through the familiar idea:

Nejat gets bored and leaves.

İşler pushes back.

The problem, he says, is not a special Nejat İşler personality defect.

Under those conditions, everyone should want to leave.

This is an important correction to twenty years of public mythology.

Personality Can Hide Structure

Celebrity journalism prefers individual explanations.

Difficult actor.

Restless actor.

Rebel.

Unpredictable personality.

Structural explanations are less entertaining.

Long episodes.

Impossible schedules.

Economic dependency.

İşler keeps trying to move the discussion from personality back to conditions.

But Others Cannot Always Leave

He also admits why others stay.

They have obligations.

Marriage.

Children.

Housing.

Bills.

He has organized his own life differently.

This adds a class and economic dimension to professional freedom.

People may recognize exploitation and still remain because leaving is expensive.

No Heroism in Saying No

This is why İşler’s refusal should not be romanticized too much.

He has created circumstances in which refusal is more possible.

That is very different from saying that everyone who stays simply lacks courage.

His own comments acknowledge the difference.

Ercüment and Respect

The conversation begins with Saygı and Ercüment Çözer.

İşler says politeness has always mattered strongly to him.

He dislikes people treating workers badly.

He becomes angry when ordinary respect disappears.

This is revealing because the public image often describes him as rude or rough.

His internal standard is almost the opposite.

The Rough Man Who Values Politeness

Here the public/private distinction becomes especially sharp.

Public Nejat:

coarse,

hard,

unpredictable.

Private principle:

do not humiliate people,

do not behave badly toward workers,

maintain basic politeness.

He says the rough image is partly a role assigned to him from outside.

Sometimes He Performs “Nejat İşler”

One of the interview’s most important admissions is that, after a while, the public image can become a game.

People expect a particular Nejat.

Sometimes he gives them that Nejat.

The roughness can even become convenient because others excuse it:

Nejat does that.

This is a sophisticated description of celebrity performance.

The Public Persona Becomes a Role

The sequence is almost theatrical.

First:

people misunderstand you.

Then:

their misunderstanding becomes stable.

Finally:

you sometimes perform the misunderstanding because it is easier than correcting it.

The actor begins playing a character named:

Nejat İşler.

“But That Is Not Me”

The essential point is that he still distinguishes the persona from the person.

The public role may be useful.

It may even offer protection.

But it is not identical with him.

This is one of the clearest statements in the entire archive about how his celebrity identity functions.

Ercüment Came from Dark Daydreams

İşler also says Ercüment contains something from his own darker fantasies.

When angry, he could imagine exaggerated violent scenarios.

He knows these thoughts are absurd.

But they provide imaginative material.

This helps explain why the character feels psychologically alive without requiring us to confuse actor and character.

Fantasy Is Not Action

The distinction matters.

Humans imagine things they would never do.

Acting can use that space.

A character can externalize a fantasy that the actor himself would keep imaginary.

This connects strongly with the Barda interview from 2007.

There too, İşler argued that ordinary people can contain violent thoughts without acting on them.

Ercüment Tries to Become Human

Discussing the second season of Saygı, İşler says Ercüment attempts something new:

he tries to become human.

But he cannot fully succeed.

The formulation is humorous, but artistically useful.

A long-running dark character needs movement.

Pure repetition would turn him into a cartoon.

Why Do Audiences Love the Bad Man?

İşler again expresses surprise that audiences love dark characters.

He does not appear to have a complete answer.

The question will become even more explicit in the 2022 Oksijen interview:

the audience loves bad people.

The 2021 conversation therefore forms a direct bridge to that later statement.

9.75 and the Expected Nejat

When discussing 9.75, İşler makes another revealing observation.

The character resembles what audiences expect the civilian Nejat İşler to be:

tired,

disorganized,

somewhat indifferent.

In other words, casting itself can use the public persona.

This creates another level of complexity.

Actor → Persona → Character

Normally:

actor plays character.

But with a celebrity like İşler:

the audience first has an imagined Nejat.

The filmmaker can then cast him partly because the character resembles that imagined Nejat.

So the chain becomes:

person → public persona → fictional character.

The boundaries are difficult to separate.

The Trilogy from Good to Bad

İşler also discusses Mehmet Eroğlu adaptations and the movement from the “good man” toward darker moral territory.

That trajectory fits his wider interest in how ordinary people become morally complicated.

Again, the interesting part is not simply evil.

It is transformation.

He Wants Comedy

One of the most refreshing parts of the interview is İşler’s insistence that he wants to perform comedy.

He complains that almost nobody offers him genuinely comic material.

This tells us something about typecasting.

Darkness Becomes a Professional Prison

The actor becomes successful at morally dark or tired characters.

The industry therefore offers:

more dark characters,

more tired men,

more anti-heroes.

Success narrows possibility.

The very roles that demonstrate range can eventually reduce range.

Comedy as Escape from the Nejat Brand

Wanting comedy is therefore more than genre preference.

It is an attempt to escape the public and industrial identity built around him.

The public expects:

Nejat İşler darkness.

He wants:

something funny.

Again, he resists repetition.

He Watches Everything

İşler says that when he is not working, he watches films constantly, including films he may not immediately like.

He describes himself as a patient viewer.

This complicates the image of the instinctive actor.

There is sustained professional curiosity underneath the apparently casual persona.

Craft Behind the Indifference

This tension appears repeatedly.

Public attitude:

I do not care very much.

Professional behavior:

watch films,

observe people,

work with discipline,

think carefully about character conditions.

The casual style should not be mistaken for lack of seriousness about craft.

Obligations He Chooses

İşler makes another revealing distinction.

He avoids compulsory professional work when possible.

But there are certain commitments he treats almost as automatic.

If Fenerbahçe asks him to do something, he tends to accept.

Likewise, he mentions Cumhuriyet as something toward which he feels a different kind of attachment.

This is important.

He is not trying to live without obligations.

He wants to choose which obligations deserve loyalty.

Freedom Is Choosing Your Commitments

That may be a better definition of his mature philosophy than total independence.

Nobody is completely independent.

İşler’s goal appears to be:

reduce accidental obligations,

preserve chosen commitments.

That is a more socially meaningful form of autonomy.

No Permanent Home in Istanbul

The interview also reveals how lightly he is living in Istanbul at this stage.

He says he is staying in a hotel rather than maintaining a conventional permanent home there and considers perhaps eventually creating one.

Again, property is treated pragmatically rather than symbolically.

A home is useful if it serves life.

Owning one is not automatically a life achievement.

A Useful Comparison with 2007

The 2007 Ulusoy interview now looks even more important.

Then İşler already said:

money should buy time.

Property was not a central ambition.

Television was largely economic.

By 2021, those ideas have become lived structure.

The philosophy has survived fourteen years.

A Useful Comparison with 2010

2010 was the crisis.

He knew what he disliked but still had to fight the system directly.

2021 is more settled.

He no longer needs to fight every production.

He has built a life that lets him choose differently.

This is the difference between:

resistance

and

design.

A Useful Comparison with 2017

The 2017 phrase “buy time” remains important, but this interview gives us the practical result.

What does purchased time look like?

It looks like:

short projects,

few compulsory obligations,

no endless series,

a smaller material structure,

the ability to leave.

A Useful Comparison with 2022

One year later, in Oksijen, İşler will describe his life in one word:

tired.

That prevents us from turning the 2021 model into perfect freedom.

Even a reduced life carries decades of accumulated work.

The solution does not erase the past.

A Useful Comparison with 2025

By 2025, he will take the next step.

Reducing obligations creates time.

Producing allows him to decide what kind of work should occupy that time.

The late-career sequence becomes:

make life smaller

→

make choice larger.

Why This Interview Matters

The 19 October 2021 Milliyet Sanat interview is one of the strongest records of Nejat İşler actually living the philosophy he had discussed for years.

The central concept is not rebellion.

It is design.

He has reduced obligations enough to avoid much of the work he does not want.

He prefers finite digital productions.

He limits recurring television roles.

He distinguishes public persona from private identity.

He admits that he sometimes performs the rough “Nejat İşler” expected by others, while insisting that the role is not the whole person.

And perhaps most importantly, the interview helps redefine freedom.

Freedom is not having no commitments.

It is having enough control to decide:

which commitments are yours.