Bir Bar Taburesi Üstünde

Bir Bar Taburesi Üstünde

KAFA TV — November 2023
Interview by Candaş Tolga Işık

The title of this program is almost impossible to separate from Teoman.

More than twenty years earlier, Paramparça had contained one of the most recognizable lines of his career:

“Bir bar taburesi üstünde…”

By 2023, the image has become the title of a conversation series.

The transformation is revealing.

What was once a lyric describing a particular emotional moment has become part of Teoman’s public mythology.

The bar stool has become almost an object associated with the character called Teoman.

A Conversation Built Around the Persona

Candaş Tolga Işık does not approach Teoman primarily through political theory, literary analysis or detailed music history.

The format is lighter.

Memories.

Favorite songs.

Daily routines.

Celebrity stories.

Funny misunderstandings.

Teoman is allowed to perform the familiar version of himself without having to defend or explain it.

That makes the program useful for a different reason.

It shows what happens when Teoman becomes comfortable enough with his own mythology to play with it.

The Bar Stool

The title itself creates a bridge between 2000 and 2023.

In Paramparça, the bar stool belongs to a lonely narrator confronting age, memory and his dead father.

More than two decades later, it can be turned into a television set.

The sadness has become cultural memory.

This is one of the clearest signs that Teoman’s catalogue has entered a different stage.

The audience already knows the references.

The program can simply activate them.

What Are Your Three Favorite Teoman Songs?

One of the first episodes asks a seemingly simple question:

Which three Teoman songs do you like most?

This is more interesting than it sounds.

By 2023, Teoman has a catalogue large enough to force retrospective selection.

The artist is no longer primarily explaining the latest release.

He is evaluating a body of work.

This is another sign of the shift from career building to catalogue interpretation.

The Artist as His Own Listener

When musicians discuss their favorite songs from their own catalogue, they are doing something unusual.

They temporarily become listeners.

Commercial success no longer has to determine the answer.

The largest hit may not be the favorite.

A less famous song may contain something closer to the songwriter’s own taste.

This allows us to distinguish Teoman’s private evaluation from public popularity.

The Familiar Teoman

The tone of the conversation is deliberately comfortable.

Teoman jokes.

Candaş Tolga Işık knows the public character well enough to provoke it.

The interaction resembles two people sitting in a bar rather than a formal press interview.

This is important because Teoman often responds differently depending on format.

A formal political interview produces analytical Teoman.

A literary interview produces reflective Teoman.

A bar conversation produces storyteller Teoman.

Storytelling

This format is especially compatible with Teoman’s later personality.

He has become increasingly interested in stories.

Books.

Memoirs.

Anecdotes.

Characters.

The musician who once compressed experiences into songs now often enjoys simply telling the story itself.

The anecdote does not always need to become art.

Sometimes the anecdote is enough.

“Beni Tarkan Zannettiler”

The second November episode centers partly on a story in which people mistake Teoman for Tarkan.

The anecdote works because the two musicians occupy very different places inside Turkish pop culture.

Both are enormous public figures.

But their personas are almost opposites.

Tarkan represents one type of star image.

Teoman represents another.

Confusing the two therefore becomes inherently comic.

Celebrity Without Control

The Tarkan story also illustrates something Teoman has discussed for decades.

Once someone becomes famous, his identity belongs partly to strangers.

People recognize.

Misrecognize.

Interpret.

Photograph.

Invent.

Celebrity creates a version of a person that circulates independently of the person himself.

Sometimes that produces intrusive tabloid narratives.

Sometimes it simply produces a funny story.

Fame Has Become Ordinary

What is striking is Teoman’s lack of surprise.

Being recognized incorrectly is not treated as a dramatic event.

Fame has existed for so long that even its absurdities have become routine.

This is the opposite of the Teoman we saw in 1999, when the sudden arrival of attention still required explanation.

By 2023, fame is environmental.

Like traffic.

“Çok Az Çalışırım”

One of the most widely circulated statements from the program concerns Teoman’s daily life.

He describes himself as someone who works very little.

Much of his time is spent wandering around.

Going for breakfast.

Changing cafés.

Sitting.

Thinking.

He summarizes himself as a “kafe adamı.”

The statement immediately became news.

The Café Man

This image is interesting because it updates the older Beyoğlu Teoman.

In 1999 he had said that Beyoğlu fed his imagination.

Bars, streets and nightlife belonged to the young urban songwriter.

The later Teoman still lives through urban public spaces.

But the bar has partly become the café.

The rhythm is slower.

Breakfast replaces some of the nightlife.

Observation remains.

Idleness

Teoman does not present idleness as a moral problem.

This is particularly striking in a culture that often treats constant productivity as virtue.

He is comfortable saying that he spends time doing almost nothing.

The statement may contain some exaggeration, but it is consistent with his later philosophy.

He no longer needs to prove his seriousness by displaying work.

Working Very Little After Working for Decades

There is an important historical context.

The ability to work little in 2023 was produced by many years of earlier work.

Albums already exist.

Songs already exist.

The audience already exists.

The catalogue continues to function.

What looks like laziness from the outside is partly the economic and cultural freedom created by a successful career.

Success as Free Time

This gives us another way to define success.

The young artist imagines success as applause.

Money.

Recognition.

Awards.

The older artist may discover another benefit:

control over time.

Teoman can sit in cafés partly because he no longer needs to behave like a musician trying to establish himself.

The catalogue buys freedom.

The Public Loves the Lazy Teoman

The media reaction is also revealing.

His comment about doing very little was immediately turned into headlines.

Why?

Because it perfectly matches the public Teoman persona.

Detached.

Unhurried.

Slightly bored.

Apparently uninterested in conventional productivity.

The quote feels “Teoman-like.”

That makes it highly shareable.

Image and Reality Again

But, as earlier long-form interviews show, this image is incomplete.

Teoman has also spent decades:

writing songs,

making albums,

directing,

writing books,

planning projects,

performing,

and curating his catalogue.

The lazy Teoman and the hardworking Teoman are both real.

They describe different scales of time.

Work in Concentrated Bursts

One possible reconciliation is that Teoman does not necessarily work continuously.

He works when a project exists.

Then he allows long periods of unstructured time.

This pattern fits his dislike of repetitive professional routines.

He does not want work to occupy every hour simply because work is considered virtuous.

Cafés as Thinking Spaces

The café also fits his creative personality.

It provides solitude without complete isolation.

A person can sit alone while remaining surrounded by people.

For someone repeatedly drawn to both loneliness and observation, this is an ideal environment.

The café offers social proximity without compulsory intimacy.

Alone Among People

This may be one of the most Teoman-like social arrangements imaginable.

He can watch.

Listen.

Think.

Read.

Drink coffee.

Move somewhere else.

He is alone.

But not completely alone.

The structure resembles the emotional world of many of his songs.

Ordinary Life After Mythology

Perhaps the most important feature of the program is how ordinary Teoman’s life sounds.

The legendary rock star spends his days:

going to cafés,

having breakfast,

walking around,

remembering funny stories,

and discussing songs.

There is something almost intentionally anticlimactic about this.

The mythology ends in ordinary routine.

The Value of the Ordinary

Earlier Teoman often seemed to seek intensity.

Music.

Love.

Nightlife.

Success.

Travel.

The later Teoman seems more capable of tolerating ordinary time.

This may represent a real form of psychological progress.

If boredom has always been one of his major enemies, learning to spend a day moving between cafés without requiring dramatic meaning is not trivial.

Humor

The program also shows how central humor has become to Teoman’s later public presence.

Earlier interviews could be intensely melancholic.

The same themes still exist.

But the older Teoman often chooses the joke first.

He knows the audience already knows the tragedy.

He does not need to perform it every time.

Irony Has Won

This returns us to the Best FM interview from 2000.

Teoman then described irony as a method for managing melancholy.

Twenty-three years later, irony has become almost the default public language.

The sadness remains part of the catalogue.

The older man speaks about it with greater distance.

From Confession to Anecdote

This may be one of the clearest changes produced by age.

A painful experience first appears as confession.

Later it becomes memory.

Eventually it can become anecdote.

Time changes narrative form.

The event does not disappear.

Its emotional temperature changes.

Why This Interview Matters

Bir Bar Taburesi Üstünde is not one of Teoman’s deepest philosophical interviews.

That is precisely why it deserves a place in the archive.

It documents another stage:

Teoman living comfortably inside the cultural character created by decades of songs and interviews.

Several things become visible:

• famous lyrics have become shared cultural references,
• Teoman can now play with the rock-star persona rather than merely be trapped by it,
• his catalogue is large enough to discuss retrospectively,
• celebrity has become ordinary rather than psychologically disruptive,
• cafés have replaced some of the nightlife as his preferred urban environment,
• unstructured time has become part of the life success allows him to build,
• and stories that once might have produced drama can now simply produce humor.

The title itself summarizes the transformation.

In 2000, a bar stool was inside the song.

In 2023, the song has become the furniture of Teoman’s public memory.

Source Note

Original platform: KAFA TV
Program: Bir Bar Taburesi Üstünde
First Teoman episode: 3 November 2023
Second Teoman episode: 17 November 2023
Host / interviewer: Candaş Tolga Işık
Document type: Video interview series
Verification: Primary source
Confidence: High

KAFA TV’s verified YouTube channel published the first Teoman episode of Bir Bar Taburesi Üstünde on 3 November 2023. The official description identifies Teoman as the guest and Candaş Tolga Işık as the program’s presenter.

A second Teoman episode, centered partly on the anecdote Beni Tarkan Zannettiler, was published on the same verified channel on 17 November 2023.

The conversation continued circulating later in November. T24, Haber Global and other contemporary publications independently identified Teoman’s statements about his daily routine as coming from Candaş Tolga Işık’s Bir Bar Taburesi Üstünde on KAFA TV.

Because both original program videos remain accessible from KAFA TV’s verified channel, the program, presenter and publication dates are primary-source verified.

This page is an archival summary and commentary. It does not reproduce the full video interviews.