Evcilik: Başkası Gibi Yaşamak

Evcilik: Başkası Gibi Yaşamak

T24 — 26 December 2024
Interview by Muammer Brav

At the end of 2024, Nejat İşler entered a new stage of his career.

He was still acting.

But with Evcilik, he was also one of the film’s producers.

That change is important.

For years, İşler had spoken about wanting more control over how and when he worked.

He had criticized television schedules.

He had left continuous series work.

He had moved toward smaller, more selective projects.

Now he was moving one step further.

Instead of only entering a structure created by others, he was beginning to help create the structure itself.

The T24 conversation with Muammer Brav, alongside director Ümit Ünal, captures this transition.

But Evcilik itself also connects strongly with one of the oldest themes in the Nejat İşler archive:

the gap between who people are and who they imagine they want to be.

What Happens When You Want Another Life?

T24 framed the conversation through a simple question:

Can you become happy by behaving like somebody else?

That question goes directly to the center of Evcilik.

The film places two couples from very different social worlds near each other.

One couple is urban.

The other appears more rural.

The encounter creates curiosity.

But curiosity begins turning into imitation.

And imitation begins exposing dissatisfaction.

The important question is not merely:

What do these people think of each other?

It is:

What does the other person’s life reveal about what they dislike in their own?

Class as Fantasy

Class difference in Evcilik is not presented only through income.

It is also aesthetic.

Language.

Clothing.

Body.

Desire.

Behavior.

Education.

How people imagine freedom.

Each couple can project something onto the other.

Urban life can imagine rural life as:

authentic,

simple,

natural,

sexually freer,

less complicated.

Rural life can imagine urban life as:

wealthier,

more sophisticated,

more powerful,

more desirable.

Neither image needs to be accurate.

That is the danger.

We Do Not Desire Other Lives Directly

Often, people do not actually want another person’s life.

They want the fantasy they created around that life.

This is one of the most interesting ideas in Evcilik.

The other person becomes a screen.

You project onto them:

freedom,

status,

confidence,

desire.

Then you begin imitating the projection.

Not the real person.

This is why the T24 title is so effective.

Can you become happy by behaving like somebody else?

The likely answer is uncomfortable:

not if you do not understand why your own life feels insufficient.

Nejat İşler Has Been Living with This Question for Years

This theme fits İşler’s archive unusually well.

Since 2003, other people have repeatedly created versions of Nejat İşler.

Leading man.

Rebel.

Bad boy.

Kaan.

Ercüment.

Delikanlı.

Outsider.

The actor has spent decades saying, in different forms:

that image is not the whole person.

Evcilik turns that personal problem into social drama.

People observe a visible identity and assume they understand the life underneath.

They do not.

Public Image Is Also an Imitation Problem

Celebrity culture works in the same way.

The audience sees:

roles,

photographs,

interviews,

clothes,

relationships,

public behavior.

Then it creates a coherent person.

But that person is partly fictional.

Someone else may then try to imitate the fictional lifestyle.

This happened especially strongly around Kaybedenler Kulübü.

Kaan became a cultural model.

Some viewers were attracted not only to the film but to:

his freedom,

his relationships,

his emotional distance,

his refusal of conventional expectations.

Yet the image itself was already selective.

The Actor Becomes Producer

The more significant professional development is production.

With Evcilik, İşler is no longer only the person selected to play a role.

He participates in deciding what gets made.

That matters because control has been a recurring theme throughout his career.

2010: Leave the System

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

At that stage, control meant escape.

Do less.

Leave.

Protect privacy.

Reject exhausting television work.

2015: Choose the Medium

By 2015, the position became more precise.

Television series were finished.

Cinema would continue.

Control now meant selection.

Not all work.

Specific work.

2024: Build the Work

With Evcilik, another stage appears.

Instead of merely choosing from projects offered to him, he can help create the project itself.

This becomes even clearer in his January 2025 Habertürk interview, where he says that producing means being the person who builds the structure rather than simply providing money.

The chronology is therefore:

leave

↓

choose

↓

build

Producing Is a Logical Development

This move should not be treated as an unrelated career experiment.

It follows naturally from the philosophy visible for more than a decade.

İşler dislikes giving up control over:

time,

working conditions,

stories,

professional identity.

Producing gives him influence over more of those variables.

Actor: Chosen

In the later Habertürk conversation, İşler explains the difference very clearly.

As an actor, he is:

the person who gets chosen.

As a producer, he becomes:

the person who chooses.

That distinction could almost summarize his career development.

An actor receives possibilities.

A producer helps create them.

Choice and Responsibility

But greater control also means greater responsibility.

Producing is not simply freedom.

Someone has to think about:

financing,

casting,

scheduling,

distribution,

audience,

the survival of the project.

This resembles an earlier transition in İşler’s life.

When he became president of Gümüşlükspor, he discovered that administration was much harder than it looked.

Now cinema presents a similar challenge.

It is one thing to criticize a system.

It is another to build one.

The Gümüşlükspor Parallel

This creates a useful comparison.

Gümüşlükspor:

from football enthusiast to administrator.

Evcilik:

from actor to producer.

In both cases, İşler moves:

from participant

to

structure-builder.

That pattern is important.

The supposedly anti-institutional Nejat İşler repeatedly ends up building institutions when existing ones do not satisfy him.

Ümit Ünal and Trust

The collaboration with Ümit Ünal also fits İşler’s preference for trusted creative relationships.

The project does not emerge from anonymous industrial scale.

It is attached to a specific filmmaker and a clear story.

This resembles the production culture seen around Tamirhane.

Smaller structures.

Recognizable collaborators.

More direct responsibility.

Good Story Before Commercial Calculation

The January 2025 interview makes this philosophy even clearer.

İşler says their first concern is telling a good story.

Money necessarily enters because filmmaking has to survive economically.

But money is not presented as the original reason for the project.

That distinction is very consistent with his older views.

Professional activity must earn money.

But earning more money does not automatically make the activity more meaningful.

“Our Job Is to Tell a Problem”

İşler describes cinema in very simple terms:

their job is to tell something that matters.

Then the work has to be turned into money because otherwise the structure cannot survive.

That is a much more realistic position than pretending money has no place in art.

It also avoids the opposite extreme of treating commercial success as the sole purpose.

Every Character Thinks They Are Right

The Habertürk conversation following the T24 appearance also gives us an especially useful statement about İşler’s acting.

When Deniz Işın talks about characters who are simultaneously right and wrong depending on perspective, İşler says this is how he plays all of his roles.

His question is:

What would I do if I were this person?

This connects beautifully with the earlier acting principle:

“Kötüyü kötü oynamıyorum.”

No Moral Label Before the Character

The method is consistent.

Do not begin with:

good,

bad,

ugly.

Begin with:

If I were inside this person’s circumstances, what would make sense to me?

That approach creates moral ambiguity without requiring moral relativism.

The actor can understand the character without endorsing the character.

Evcilik Is Ideal Material for This Method

Because the film is built around class difference and mutual projection, every character can easily become a stereotype.

Urban couple.

Rural couple.

Educated.

Uneducated.

Rich.

Poor.

Modern.

Traditional.

The acting method has to resist those labels.

Otherwise the film becomes a social cartoon.

Class Is Not Character

That distinction matters.

Class shapes behavior.

It does not completely explain a person.

İşler’s broader acting philosophy is useful here because it works against automatic classification.

The character must remain more complicated than the category.

Identity Through Comparison

The film also asks how identity changes when people compare themselves with others.

This is an increasingly contemporary problem.

People do not need to meet another life directly anymore.

Social media provides endless lives to compare.

Homes.

Bodies.

Relationships.

Travel.

Success.

Lifestyle.

The question in Evcilik therefore extends beyond the specific couples.

How much of dissatisfaction comes from constantly observing alternatives?

Wanting What You Think the Other Person Has

Comparison creates a strange form of desire.

You may not know what the other person actually feels.

But you know how their life looks.

That may be enough to make your own life feel inadequate.

Again, public image becomes central.

Appearance can reorganize desire even when appearance is misleading.

The Return of the Public/Private Theme

This makes Evcilik a late-career continuation of the 2012 Marie Claire interview.

Then İşler said:

the person he is at home is not the person people imagine from outside.

Now the film dramatizes a similar principle:

visible life and lived life are not the same thing.

The difference is that the idea has moved from autobiography into fiction.

From Being Misread to Making Stories About Misreading

This may be one of the most interesting developments across the archive.

Early İşler:

People misunderstand me.

Later İşler:

participates in stories about why people misunderstand one another.

That is a movement from personal complaint to artistic subject.

The Producer as Story Selector

Producing gives this development additional significance.

If İşler is now participating in story selection, then themes such as:

identity,

projection,

class,

social performance,

moral ambiguity

are no longer only roles offered to him.

They can become stories he chooses to help make.

Control Without Directing

In 2019, İşler had joked that directing seemed difficult because the director had to be on set every day.

Producing offers another path.

It gives creative influence without requiring exactly the same daily role as directing.

However, by early 2025, he would also say he had a project he wanted to direct himself.

That suggests the movement toward greater creative authorship may not stop with producing.

The Career Becomes Less Reactive

This is perhaps the biggest professional change.

For much of an actor’s life, the process is reactive.

A script arrives.

An offer arrives.

A director calls.

The actor says yes or no.

Production changes that relationship.

The creative life becomes more proactive.

What story should exist?

Who should make it?

How?

From Protecting Time to Spending It Intentionally

This also connects back to “buying time.”

The goal was never simply to have empty hours.

The deeper goal was to control what the hours were used for.

Production represents one possible answer.

Use time not only to escape unwanted work.

Use it to create wanted work.

A Useful Comparison with 2010

The development across fourteen years is striking.

2010:
The system takes too much from me.

2024:
I can help build another production system.

The first response is defensive.

The second is constructive.

A Useful Comparison with Gümüşlükspor

Again:

2015: build a small football institution.

2024: help build a film.

Different industries.

Same maturation.

Freedom without responsibility is easy to romanticize.

İşler’s later life increasingly combines both.

A Useful Comparison with Tamirhane

Tamirhane showed the value of a trusted ensemble.

Evcilik moves him closer to responsibility for assembling the conditions around an ensemble.

This is why the production role should be treated as a genuine turning point rather than a line in the credits.

Why This Interview Matters

The 26 December 2024 T24 conversation is important because Evcilik brings together two major threads in Nejat İşler’s archive.

The first is personal and philosophical:

visible identity is not the same as lived identity.

The film explores people looking at another social world and imagining that another person’s life might solve dissatisfaction with their own.

That problem echoes İşler’s decades-long conflict with his own public image.

The second thread is professional:

the actor is becoming a builder.

After years of criticizing production structures, rejecting exhausting schedules and choosing work selectively, İşler begins moving into producing.

The progression is remarkably coherent:

first protect your time.

then choose what deserves it.

eventually help create the thing you want to spend it on.