Yapımcı: Kuran Adam

Yapımcı: Kuran Adam

Habertürk — 2 January 2025
Interview by Mehmet Çalışkan

At the beginning of 2025, Nejat İşler explained why producing had become important to him.

The answer is useful because he rejects the simplest definition.

A producer is not merely:

the person with the money.

For İşler, the producer is:

“kuran adam.”

The person who builds the structure.

That phrase marks an important development in his career.

For more than a decade, İşler had criticized structures created by others.

Now he was becoming interested in creating them himself.

From Selected to Selector

İşler describes one of the fundamental differences between acting and producing very clearly.

As an actor, you are usually selected.

A director.

A producer.

A casting team.

Someone decides that you belong in the project.

Producing changes that position.

Now you can help decide:

• which story is told,
• who tells it,
• who performs it,
• how the project is built.

The actor moves from being chosen to participating in the choosing.

That shift is more important than a new credit on a poster.

Why Evcilik?

Evcilik becomes the project through which İşler tests this new position.

The film gives him the opportunity to work with Ümit Ünal around a story he considers worth telling.

This is consistent with what he had already said in the previous T24 conversation.

The central concern is not simply:

make another movie.

It is:

make this story.

Story Before Structure

İşler repeatedly brings the conversation back to story.

A production exists to make the story possible.

Money matters.

Distribution matters.

Organization matters.

But if the underlying story has no reason to exist, the machinery becomes empty.

This is a surprisingly coherent continuation of his earlier career philosophy.

Career Was Never the Final Goal

Since at least 2010, İşler had been skeptical of expanding career simply for the sake of expansion.

More television.

More visibility.

More money.

More repetition.

These were never automatically positive.

Producing therefore does not represent a sudden embrace of careerism.

It represents greater control over what the career is used for.

Money Is Necessary, Not Sacred

İşler’s comments about producing also show a pragmatic relationship with money.

Film requires money.

That cannot be romanticized away.

A production that cannot finance itself may not exist.

But the economic structure should serve the story rather than replace it.

This position is consistent with his 2017 philosophy.

Money is a tool.

Not a final score.

From Buying Time to Buying Possibility

In 2017, money was useful because it could buy time.

By 2025, another possibility appears.

Money and production structure can also buy:

creative possibility.

A story that might otherwise not exist can be made.

This expands the earlier philosophy.

First:

use resources to protect life.

Later:

use resources to create chosen work.

Producer as Architect

The phrase “kuran adam” is especially good because it suggests architecture.

A producer builds conditions.

The building blocks include:

• financing,
• people,
• timing,
• trust,
• decisions,
• logistics,
• creative direction.

The finished film is visible.

The structure underneath it is often invisible.

İşler seems increasingly interested in that invisible layer.

The Gümüşlükspor Parallel Returns

This is not the first time he has moved from participant to organizer.

At Gümüşlükspor, he moved from football lover to club president.

Then he discovered how difficult organization actually was.

With producing, the pattern repeats.

Actor:

participates in the system.

Producer:

helps build the system.

The same maturation appears in two completely different fields.

Criticism Is Easier Than Construction

This makes the 2025 position more interesting than his earlier criticism of television.

It is relatively easy to say:

this system is bad.

It is harder to build:

a better-sized,

better-timed,

more meaningful alternative.

Producing exposes İşler to that difficulty directly.

Control Comes with Burden

For years, control had appeared mostly as freedom.

Say no.

Leave.

Reduce work.

Protect time.

Producing adds the other side.

Control means:

responsibility.

If the project fails, there is no distant system to blame.

You helped build it.

This makes producing a more adult version of the freedom İşler had been seeking.

The Desire to Direct

İşler also says that he has a project he may want to direct himself.

That is significant because in 2019 he had joked about not wanting the daily discipline required of directors.

Something has changed.

The desire for authorship has increased.

Producing may be an intermediate stage between acting and directing.

From Role to World

An actor is responsible primarily for a character.

A director is responsible for the whole world around that character.

A producer helps make that world possible.

İşler’s late-career movement is therefore spatially larger.

Character

→ project

→ structure

→ potentially direction.

This is a logical expansion of authorship.

Still Not Leaving Acting

None of this means he has lost interest in acting.

That is important.

Just as writing did not replace acting, producing does not replace acting.

The pattern throughout his later career is additive.

Actor.

Writer.

Organizer.

Producer.

Possibly director.

The identity becomes wider.

The Anti-Specialist

Celebrity culture prefers a simple professional identity.

Actor.

Singer.

Director.

İşler’s later career becomes increasingly resistant to that simplification.

This mirrors his personal resistance to public labels.

He does not want to be only:

leading man,

rebel,

Kaan,

Ercüment,

Gümüşlük outsider.

Professionally, he also becomes harder to reduce to one role.

Evcilik and Choosing Stories

The importance of Evcilik therefore exceeds the film itself.

It is evidence that İşler wants to participate earlier in the creative process.

Not just:

Which character should I play?

But:

Which story should exist?

This is a much more consequential question.

Production as Independence

Producing also offers another form of independence.

An actor who waits for offers remains dependent on other people’s taste.

Producing reduces that dependency.

If the right project does not arrive, help create one.

This is perhaps the clearest professional version of the philosophy visible throughout the archive:

do not remain trapped by structures you cannot control.

The Difference Between Ego and Agency

Greater control can easily become ego.

That is a danger in any move toward producing or directing.

But İşler frames the role more structurally.

The producer is not the star.

The producer is the one who makes the project possible.

That distinction matters.

Agency is not necessarily centrality.

You can have more influence without making the work more about yourself.

A Useful Comparison with 2003

The distance from the first archive entry is striking.

2003:
The industry begins deciding what Nejat İşler is: a leading man.

2025:
İşler is helping decide what kind of film will exist.

Twenty-two years separate those positions.

One is reactive.

The other is constructive.

A Useful Comparison with 2010

The development from 2010 is even clearer.

2010:
“I want to get out of the market.”

2025:
“I want to help build the production.”

The first impulse is escape.

The later impulse is authorship.

That may be one of the deepest transformations in the archive.

A Useful Comparison with 2017

2017 provided the philosophy of time.

Protect it.

Do not sell all of it to work.

2025 provides the next question:

Which work is worth spending that protected time on?

Producing becomes one answer.

A Useful Comparison with Tamirhane

Tamirhane showed how much İşler values trusted creative groups.

Evcilik shows him moving closer to creating the conditions in which those groups can work.

The progression is subtle but important.

First:

participate in the ensemble.

Then:

help construct the ensemble.

Cinema as Problem-Telling

İşler also describes cinema as a way of telling a problem.

This is consistent with his strongest films.

Barda:

violence and coexistence.

9,75:

memory and political trauma.

Tamirhane:

goodness, crime and contemporary morality.

Evcilik:

class, desire and imitation.

The stories may entertain.

But there is usually a problem underneath them.

The Producer Chooses Which Problems Matter

Once İşler becomes a producer, this takes on new significance.

He is no longer simply interpreting the problem a script gives him.

He participates in deciding which problem deserves a film.

That is the beginning of authorship.

Why This Interview Matters

The 2 January 2025 Habertürk interview marks one of the clearest professional transitions in Nejat İşler’s career.

His definition of the producer as:

“kuran adam”

captures the change perfectly.

For years, he had tried to gain control by withdrawing from structures he disliked.

Now he is beginning to gain control by constructing alternatives.

The movement can be summarized as:

2003 — be selected.

2010 — resist the system selecting you.

2015 — choose fewer projects.

2024–2025 — help build the projects themselves.

This is not simply career expansion.

It is the professional form of a much older search for autonomy.