Şahsiyet: A Must-See Turkish Cult Classic in the Making

If you watch Turkish TV to learn Turkish, you may feel that you’ve sacrificed part of your life for this language. The episodes usually last up to two hours, and the plots can unwind for episode counts nearing the hundred mark. The commitment involved should not be taken lightly. I, myself, haven’t watched Turkish TV since Kiralık Aşk, which I promptly ditched after I wrote about it for Yabangee.

But let’s be clear. I usually stuff my head in books, instead of TV. Series, regardless of where they hail from, always present the risk of putting me in a state mind-numbing boredom. I’m not able to recount any episodes of Game of Thrones, for instance. Why? I’ve never watched it. That said, movies do get me hooked, because the commitment is so much lower. With two hours and a check mark, I can take a movie off my list. It takes a rare unicorn of a TV series to get me to sit down, munch on popcorn, and gaze for hours into the ethereal glow of modern technology’s greatest distraction tool: the screen.

It’s true, whenever I catch whiff of something odd, eccentric or quirky, I’ll test it out. And these traits are exactly what’s missing from Turkish TV. Or so I thought. Then I begrudgingly accepted my boyfriend’s invitation to watch a brand new show: Şahsiyet. The title means ‘personality’ in English and you can find it on Puhu TV, a channel only available online. It features English subtitles, so you’ll learn lots of Turkish as you watch.

My boyfriend had tried to explain to me the cult-classic potential of this series by name dropping: It features a legendary theater actor, Haluk Bilginer, who has starred in Nuri Bilge Ceylan films — and one of the Turkish directors currently bringing fresh ideas to the screen, Onur Saylak. A rising star, Cansu Dere, who used to date comedian Cem Yılmaz, has a leading role. Now, if you haven’t already noticed, name dropping famous Turkish people with foreigners has zero impact. The impact is less than zero for me, since I can’t even name the famous actors and actresses in America, where I’m from. It wasn’t until he started to describe the plot that my ears pricked up.

This show, in brief, is mostly set in Istanbul and centers on a protagonist named Agah Beyoğlu (Haluk Bilginer). He learns that he has Alzheimer’s disease when his faithful feline companion, Münir, dies from his own forgetful neglect to feed him. He buries his furry friend on a cliff overlooking the Bosphorus. Then his psychiatrist gives him a set of principles and guidelines along with some meds to keep it together. But the news brings him an existential quandary. He thinks that with memory-loss, he’ll lose the essential fibers of his being–his personality. On the other hand, he sees it as an opportunity to take revenge by murdering a long list of enemies before he forgets. After that, memory-loss will relieve him of the psychological burden of becoming a serial killer. It has a beautifully strange set up that makes Agah seem less of an old geezer and more of a brilliant criminal mastermind. Actor Haluk Bilginer enlivens this paradox with charm and finesse.

Agah starts to commit murders, which, disturbingly, all appear to involve his old friends. He pastes their pictures on his wall, creates meticulous files to aid his memory, and leaves messages printed with old filing cabinet labels applied to his victims’ foreheads. All of this filing paraphernalia relates to the fact that he worked for years at a courthouse as a file clerk, a clue which seems important.

Soon, we learn about another anomalous character. A bad-ass cop named Nevra (Cansu Dere), the only female in the homicide ward, is chosen to investigate and solve the mystery of the killer’s identity. As the plot unfolds, we learn that she, Agah, and all of the victims are all connected in some way to an incident that occurred years ago in a small fictional town on the outskirts of Istanbul called Kambura. But you must wrack your brain to fit the puzzle pieces together as the plot divulges more and more secrets.

On top of that, Agah’s alcoholic daughter, Zuhal gets a divorce from her husband and returns from Australia to live with her father in his flat with her unruly teenage son, Deva. Now, in addition to the obstacle of pursuing his murders with Alzheimer’s, Agah faces the difficulty of hiding his actions from his daughter and grandson. He starts to use his girlfriend as an excuse to avoid them. This turns out to be one of the most bizarre and comedic serial killer plots I’ve encountered. And spoiler alert: Agah ends up making himself a cuddly cat costume for a disguise.

Apart from its appealing fantasies such as a strong female police officer breaking the gender mold, the prospect of taking revenge without regrets, and the idea that old age can still be ‘hip,’ this show tackles major contemporary themes that engross Turks. It weaves in the alienation of Istanbul versus the suffocation of secrecy in small towns, the immorality of xenophobia, the silence that surrounds rape, and the fears we face about old age. It also displays more classic material surrounding loyalty, family, and the sparks of love. Meanwhile, the detective mystery narrative hearkens more to the British and American pop-culture imagination. For instance, Turkey has never had a serial killer. This element is obviously borrowed from elsewhere. The combination gives it a hybrid quality that makes it seem as surreal as (for lack of a better word) a unicorn.

As a bookish person myself, I wanted to know whose imagination this unicorn had spawned from. Lo and behold, none other than Hakan Günday (the Chuck Palahniuk of Turkey) writes the screenplay. Edgy, philosophical, and cool, Hakan Günday is a force to be reckoned with for literature, and now on screen. Whereas most original shows start off with a bang and then wane and fizzle out by the end, the suspense of Şahsiyet holds steady and even intensifies as the many interwoven episodes unfold. Günday has managed to simultaneously tap into the Turkish and international subconscious leaving us with a seriously addictive treat: Şahsiyet. And with no flattery intended, I wouldn’t trade it for anything produced in the U.S.

Whether you need to revive your interest in Turkish TV, watch a new dizi to adapt to Turkey, or just to pick up some more Turkish, I highly recommend Şahsiyet.