Anlatanadam

Out of the import trade

Anlatanadam is the stage name of İbrahim Türker, born in İzmir in 1980 and a chemical engineering graduate of Gazi University who spent his first working decade in commerce rather than in a laboratory. In an interview with Habertürk published in September 2021 he described running a food import and export company with roughly 300 commercial clients, and the boats, cars and property that came with that, before selling the business to his German partners around 2007 and moving to Istanbul.

The move came out of a conversation rather than a plan. The television host Beyazıt Öztürk, who had noticed the way Türker talked, told him he was built for show business rather than trade and should leave the company behind and come to Istanbul. Türker started by telling stories at private gatherings hosted by Sezen Aksu and Ajda Pekkan, rooms where the audience was small and knew the business, before taking the same material to ticket buyers.

Between 2007 and 2014 he ran a production company that turned out more than 600 content segments for Turkish channels. He was then defrauded by a business associate and lost much of what he had rebuilt, a reversal he has since worked into his act rather than kept off the stage. He has also written a newspaper column for Hürriyet. He is married to Nurgül Türker and has two sons.

Why the name fits the method

The stage name translates as something close to "the man who tells". It was not chosen for a poster: he has said friends attached it to him years earlier because he talked without stopping and told stories constantly, until his blood pressure dropped.

That is an accurate description of the act. The sets are narrative rather than a sequence of punchlines, built out of family, neighbourhood and whatever has recently gone wrong, and delivered entirely in Turkish. Alongside his own shows he has hosted Rabarba Comedy Night with Mesut Süre and other comedians, and has run a quiz-shaped YouTube strand, Kolay mı, Zor mu?.

Meksika Açmazı, in three formats

The work that moved Türker from a touring name to a national one is Meksika Açmazı, a comedy format he created with Mesut Süre and Fazlı Polat in which the three argue their way around questions that have no answer. It began as a podcast in 2021. By May 2023 it had run to 73 episodes and, according to Podcast Turkey, had been staged live more than 50 times to an audience of over 40,000; by August 2023 Gazete Kadıköy was reporting a listenership of more than ten million a month.

The stage version and the film overlapped directly. In August 2023 the trio played Selamiçeşme Özgürlük Parkı in Kadıköy, and the opening scene of the film was shot at that performance; Türker told the local paper the Kadıköy audience was a tremendous one. Principal photography had begun in Cappadocia in the first week of July, produced by Muhteşem Film with TME Films.

Meksika Açmazı reached Turkish cinemas on 17 November 2023. Alper Mestçi directed; it runs 91 minutes and casts Süre, Polat and Türker alongside Nicholas Facey, Ecem Çalhan and Duygu Kocabıyık, following a creative team that travels to Cappadocia for a project and comes apart over money, jealousy and romance. It is, in effect, the podcast's premise given a location and a budget.

Hepsi Gerçek, the stories in print

The most recent development is a book. Hepsi Gerçek, Türker's first, was published by Destek Yayınları on 16 September 2026: a collection of short stories drawn from his own life, his family and the streets he grew up on, with pieces titled Kayıp Ambulans, Vahşi Batı'da Bir Gün, Çakal ve Kadriye, Küçük Hoca and Sevenleri Ayırmayın.

Türker's own term for what he does to a true story is "artırılmış gerçeklik" — augmented reality — the teller's touch that makes the feeling in an event visible rather than inventing the event. The stories work the same seam as the stand-up: childhood incidents that shrink when examined as an adult but leave a mark anyway, humour sitting next to something sadder. The prose keeps the rhythm of a man who learned to write by speaking.

Where things stand, November 2026

Türker is currently working two separate live properties in parallel. Under his own name there are thirteen stand-up dates listed from 3 November to 23 December 2026, starting at Ordu Atatürk Kültür Merkezi on 3 November and Samsun Büyükşehir Belediyesi Sanat Merkezi on 4 November, then İzmir Performance Hall on 8 November, the Duru stage at Watergarden in Istanbul on 17 November, Kale Sahne in Sakarya on 21 November, Podyum Sanat Mahal in Bursa on 24 November and the Memduh Şevket Esendal stage in Çorlu on 25 November. December takes in Edirne on the 9th, Eskişehir on the 11th, Çankaya in Ankara on the 12th, Düzce on the 13th, Konyaaltı in Antalya on the 18th and Kadıköy Eğitim Sahnesi on the 23rd. Tickets start at ₺950.

The venues say something about the shape of the career: municipal culture centres and mid-sized halls in provincial cities, played one night at a time, rather than arenas in the three big markets. Istanbul gets two nights across eight weeks and no more.

Running against that, Meksika Açmazı continues as a trio show under the title İyi Misin?. The Antalya performance falls on 5 November 2026 at 20:00 at the Konyaaltı Belediyesi Nazım Hikmet fair and congress centre, with Süre, Türker and Polat all on stage, tickets at ₺1,250, ₺1,500 and ₺1,750 in three categories, and a 16-plus restriction. Cameras are barred and latecomers are not admitted once it has started, because the performance is being recorded for television.

What the show is like

The current solo show has been cut down from what it used to be. A review in Tiyatro Günlüğü from June 2022, written after a performance in the A Salonu at Caddebostan Kültür Merkezi, described a set running close to two hours in two acts — unusually long for Turkish stand-up at the time — with the first half built on the relationships between a mother, a father and their children, and the second deliberately changing register to prove the act was not only domestic. Firuze Özdemir came on as a guest in the second half.

The 2026 version is leaner: 90 minutes, one act, no interval and no listed support, billed as material not performed anywhere before and ranging from family business and relationships to health obsessions and various things that have happened to him. Most dates start at 20:30, with 19:00 starts in İzmir and Düzce, and the show carries a 16-plus rating.

On the criticism that has followed him — that he does not work the room much — the 2022 reviewer disagreed on balance, noting that while the audience is not the backbone of the set, the exchanges he does have with it are measured rather than absent. The verdict was that the act delivers what viewers who know him from podcasts and television expect, and the reviewer left the hall having laughed a good deal.