Şahan Gökbakar

Şahan Gökbakar — Biography

Born in İzmir on 22 October 1980, Şahan Gökbakar lost his father in a traffic accident when he was eight; the grandson of Balkan immigrants, he became drawn to theatre as a child watching his neighbor Gülseren Gürtunca rehearse. After schooling at ODTÜ College, he was admitted in 1998 among the top four of 350 applicants to Bilkent University's theatre department, graduating in 2002. Following the TV8 New Year's show Zıbın (2003) and the hidden-camera series Zoka, he became known for the characters Recep İvedik, Bülent Binbaş and Küçük Oskar, created with Alper Mestçi for the sketch show Dikkat Şahan Çıkabilir. After a small role in his brother Togan Gökbakar's film Gen (2006), he took the lead in Togan's Recep İvedik (2008); the brothers founded the production company Çamaşırhane Film in 2011 and went on to make seven films in the series together. He created other comic characters in films such as Osman Pazarlama, Celal ile Ceren and Kayhan, directed Zengo in 2020, and won the Golden Butterfly Award for cinema in 2014. During Turkey's 2021 wildfires he was active both on the ground and on social media, and he opposed mining activity at Mount Ida and in olive groves in 2019 and 2022. He married Selin Ortaçlı in 2015 and the couple have two children.