Tamirhane: Ekip, Risk ve Bağımsız Üretim

Tamirhane: Ekip, Risk ve Bağımsız Üretim

T24 — 9 November 2022
Interview by Muammer Brav

By 2022, Nejat İşler’s career had moved far beyond the image of the solitary outsider.

That public image still existed.

But Tamirhane placed him inside something much more collective:

an ensemble.

In Muammer Brav’s T24 conversation, İşler appears together with members of the film’s team, including Erkan Kolçak Köstendil, Rıza Kocaoğlu and Merve Dizdar.

That context changes the emphasis.

The discussion is not primarily about:

Nejat İşler’s private life,

his illness,

his public image,

Gümüşlük,

or the mythology surrounding one character.

It is about making a film together.

The Collective Nejat

This matters because a large part of İşler’s public persona had been built around independence.

He was often imagined as someone who:

worked alone,

decided alone,

left when he wanted,

avoided institutions,

resisted pressure.

But cinema is rarely made that way.

Even the most individualistic actor works inside a collective structure.

Tamirhane makes that structure visible.

Friendship as Production Infrastructure

The film emerged from a network of actors and filmmakers who already knew one another well.

That familiarity affects the way the team talks about the project.

There is less emphasis on formal hierarchy.

More emphasis on:

trust,

shared language,

friendship,

risk.

This is important because İşler’s later creative life increasingly depends on these kinds of networks.

Not large systems.

Smaller groups of people he trusts.

Independence Does Not Mean Solitude

This is one of the clearest corrections to the myth of Nejat İşler as a lone outsider.

His version of independence often seems to mean:

choosing your dependencies.

Not eliminating them.

He does not want to be trapped inside an industrial system he dislikes.

But he is willing to rely heavily on people he trusts.

That is a much more realistic form of freedom.

The Workshop Metaphor

The title Tamirhane itself is useful.

A repair shop is a place where things are:

opened,

examined,

broken down,

fixed,

reassembled.

That is also a good metaphor for the film’s creative environment.

Independent production often works through improvisation and problem-solving.

There is less institutional protection.

More direct responsibility.

Everyone sees the machinery.

Risk Without Romanticism

The team repeatedly talks about risk.

But risk here does not mean glamorous rebellion.

It means:

making something that may fail,

choosing a project without guaranteed commercial safety,

working outside the most predictable formulas.

That is an important development in İşler’s archive.

Earlier, risk often appeared personally:

leave a series,

refuse work,

play an unpleasant character.

By 2022, risk becomes collective.

A whole team accepts it together.

Cinema as a Space for Uncertainty

İşler has long preferred cinema partly because each film is finite.

But finiteness does not mean safety.

Cinema can still fail commercially.

A performance can fail.

A film can disappear.

An audience may reject it.

This uncertainty seems to attract him more than the repetitive security of conventional television production.

The Difference Between Career Safety and Creative Safety

A career-safe decision asks:

Will this maintain visibility?

Will this protect status?

Will this sell?

A creatively safe decision asks something different:

Will this allow us to make the film we actually want to make?

Tamirhane belongs more clearly to the second category.

That places it in continuity with İşler’s broader movement away from career maximization.

From Leaving Systems to Building Small Systems

This is another important progression.

In 2010, İşler wanted to leave the “piyasa.”

By 2022, he is not simply outside systems.

He is participating in smaller systems built around trust.

This is much more mature than pure withdrawal.

The alternative to a bad institution is not no institution.

It can be:

a better-sized institution.

Ensemble Acting

The film also highlights another side of İşler’s acting.

His most iconic roles are often remembered individually:

Kaan.

Ercüment.

The violent man in Barda.

But ensemble work requires a different discipline.

The actor must leave space.

Respond.

Support rhythm.

Accept that the film is not built around a single persona.

This collective mode fits the wider philosophical shift in his later life.

Less centrality.

More participation.

Friendship and Professional Boundaries

Working with friends can be dangerous.

Personal relationships can blur professional criticism.

Loyalty can make conflict harder.

But it can also create something valuable:

a shared tolerance for uncertainty.

The Tamirhane conversation suggests that trust reduces the need for excessive formal control.

People can take creative risks because they already understand one another.

Gümüşlükspor as an Earlier Parallel

There is a useful parallel with Gümüşlükspor.

The contexts are very different.

Football club.

Film production.

But the same lesson appears:

independence is not enough.

You need people.

Budgets.

Planning.

Shared responsibility.

The public rebel repeatedly ends up inside collective projects.

That is not a contradiction.

It may be the more complete version of him.

From Community to Creative Community

Gümüşlükspor created a local social community.

Tamirhane creates a creative community.

In both cases, İşler seems more comfortable inside structures where:

relationships are visible,

scale is limited,

participation is direct.

This contrasts sharply with the anonymous machinery of mass television production.

Risk as Loyalty to the Work

One of the strongest ideas surrounding the film is the willingness to take risks rather than retreat into professional safety.

This is not simply bravado.

For actors with established careers, safe choices are always available.

Familiar formats.

Predictable characters.

High-visibility productions.

Choosing uncertainty therefore becomes meaningful.

It suggests that career preservation is not the final objective.

The Anti-Career Career

Nejat İşler’s career contains a recurring paradox.

He has had a highly successful career while often talking as if career itself is not the main point.

This can sound contradictory.

But the pattern is actually consistent.

He values:

the profession,

the project,

the people,

the character.

He is less interested in:

career optimization.

That distinction helps explain why risky independent work remains attractive even after decades of visibility.

Tamirhane and the “Bad Character” Theme

Although Tamirhane is not simply another Ercüment-style project, it continues İşler’s interest in morally unstable worlds.

Crime.

Violence.

Compromise.

People making bad decisions.

Once again, the material does not divide humanity cleanly into:

good people

and

bad people.

That is consistent with the acting philosophy expressed in the Episode interview:

“Kötüyü kötü oynamıyorum.”

Morality Inside Ordinary Life

This is one of İşler’s recurring artistic interests.

Darkness does not arrive from outside ordinary society.

It grows inside:

friendship,

money,

fear,

desire,

survival,

humiliation.

The characters are recognizable before they become extreme.

That is precisely why they are unsettling.

A Useful Comparison with Barda

In Barda, violence was almost unbearable.

The purpose was confrontation.

In Tamirhane, darkness is filtered through a different tonal world.

There is more humor.

More absurdity.

More ensemble energy.

This shows another development.

Moral darkness does not require one emotional register.

The same subject can be explored through horror, black comedy or crime.

A Useful Comparison with Episode

The Episode interview explains İşler’s internal acting method.

The T24 Tamirhane conversation shows the external production environment in which that acting occurs.

Episode asks:

How do you construct a character?

T24 asks:

How do people construct a film together?

Both are necessary for understanding his profession.

Toward Producing

This conversation also prepares the later Evcilik period.

By 2024–2025, İşler will move more explicitly into producing.

That move becomes easier to understand if we see that he is already increasingly interested in:

how projects are built,

who builds them,

what kind of team makes risk possible.

The actor is beginning to look beyond the boundaries of performance.

Why This Interview Matters

The 9 November 2022 T24 conversation is important because it corrects one of the most persistent simplifications in the Nejat İşler story.

He is often imagined as a radically individual figure.

But meaningful parts of his later life depend on collective structures.

Gümüşlükspor.

Writing communities.

Film teams.

Independent production networks.

Tamirhane shows Nejat İşler not as the lone anti-hero but as one member of a group trying to make something uncertain together.

That difference is important.

His mature version of independence is not:

I need nobody.

It is closer to:

I want to decide who and what I depend on.