Erdem Akakçe

Konya, Ankara and the Dostlar apprenticeship

Erdem Akakçe was born in Konya on 13 December 1975 and grew up through Ankara's Özel Yükseliş Koleji before training at Bilkent University's Faculty of Music and Performing Arts, in the theatre department. That Ankara grounding matters, because his first professional home was Dostlar Tiyatrosu, the company built around Genco Erkal, where he made his debut in 1998 as the slave Satiros and Anitos in Yalınayak Sokrates.

He stayed with Dostlar until 2005, and the repertoire from those years reads like a syllabus in political and absurdist comedy: Tankred Dorst's Oyuncu, Laurent Baffie's Yarışma, Erkal's own adaptation Yaşasın Savaş, and Behiç Ak's Fay Hattı, in which he played Murat and also designed the sound and effects. Along the way he worked with Ankara Ekin Tiyatrosu, Kent Oyuncuları, Tiyatro Oyunbozan, Tiyatro Rast and Aysa Prodüksiyon, and by 2006 he was playing Nagg in Beckett's Oyun Sonu. In 2013 he took the title role in a production of III. Richard, a reminder that the comic register he is now known for was never the whole of him.

The awards shelf

Akakçe's prizes cluster around comedy. Yarışma brought him an Avni Dilligil award, Yaşasın Savaş an Ankara Sanat Kurumu prize, and Fay Hattı and Kocasını Pişiren Kadın each earned him an Afife Theatre Award, the first in 2004 and the second in 2007. A third Afife arrived in 2018.

That 2018 sweep was driven by İntiharın Genel Provası, a 2017 production in which his performance was recognised as best comedy actor by three separate award bodies, including the Sadri Alışık Theatre Awards, where he took the prize for best supporting role in a musical or comedy. For a working actor who has spent most of his career in ensembles rather than as a marquee name, that concentration of honours around one role is the clearest evidence of how the profession rates him.

Television's reliable face

Screen work began in 2002 with the series Biz Size Âşık Olduk, in which he played Harun, followed by Ayhan in Bir İstanbul Masalı. From there the credits stack up across two decades: Teoman in Aşk Yakar, Haluk Aslan in Beni Böyle Sev, Yaman Çalışkan in Tehlikeli Karım, and Behram in the historical epic Uyanış: Büyük Selçuklu. He has been a cinema regular too, with Anlat İstanbul, Türkler Çıldırmış Olmalı, Karanlıktakiler, Gölgesizler, Korkuyorum Anne, Ya Sonra, Nar and Bizim İçin Şampiyon on the list, plus a lead in Ara.

The streaming era found him quickly. In 2022 and 2023 he appeared in Netflix's Sıcak Kafa, played Eşref Edip in Akif, and joined Disney+'s Aktris. By August 2023 Haber7 was introducing him to a new audience as Nedim in TRT1's family drama Benim Güzel Ailem, having come to it from İyilik and Aktris. He also works as a voice artist, and a November 2025 review of Şebbaz singled out his Storytel reading of Suç ve Ceza as a benchmark for the vocal work he does on stage.

Meçhul Paşa: a print shop under siege

The show that currently defines Akakçe live is Meçhul Paşa, written by Ahmet Sami Özbudak and directed by Emrah Eren for Tiyatro Hayali. It has been on stage since 2023; İstiklal Caddesi Kültür Sanat reported on 11 October 2023 that it was playing Besa Sahne Cevahir, Fişekhane and House of Performance that month, and Kadıköy Municipality's listing shows it at Caddebostan Kültür Merkezi on 6 February 2024. Three years on, it is still selling.

The subject is Markopaşa, Turkey's first political satire newspaper, launched in 1946 by Sabahattin Ali, Aziz Nesin and Rıfat Ilgaz with the cartoonist Mustafa Mim Uykusuz. The paper survived through seven names, eight owners, ten editors, nine printing houses and ten addresses, produced 77 issues, and drew 16 lawsuits that added up to eight years and two and a half months of prison for its makers. Özbudak and Eren tell that story as an ortaoyunu, the traditional Turkish open-air comic form, and the Biletinial listing bills it as a comedy in two acts running 120 minutes, rated 12+.

Akakçe shares the stage with Fatih Koyunoğlu and Bülent Çolak, with design by Barış Dinçel, lighting by Yakup Çartık and music by Deniz Bayrak. The same creative team now works across both Tiyatro Hayali productions, and the trio's rapport is the engine of the piece. Audience response on Biletinial stands at 4.7 out of 5 from 4,579 ratings, with 3,884 of those giving the full five stars.

Şebbaz: two puppeteers on the run

Şebbaz, again by Özbudak and Eren, arrived in 2025 as a two-hander for Akakçe and Koyunoğlu. They play Mehmet and Turna, childhood friends who trained under the same master as shadow-play performers and have been estranged for years. Reunited to perform a piece called Ejderha ve Balık at the circumcision feast of a powerful man's grandson, they let slip secrets that enrage their host, and the rest of the play is a single night's flight through Istanbul.

Tüveyç Demir's review for Sanat Okur, published on 20 November 2025, called it a modern shadow play that casts the light of tradition on the present. Demir described Akakçe's Mehmet as secular and withdrawn, carrying suppressed rage and fragility, and praised his unseen vocal turn as Umacı, a kind of watching social conscience. Koyunoğlu's Turna, by contrast, is the conservative, childlike one who stays within the system's bounds. The one reservation was that the visual richness of the shadow-play staging, with Dinçel's designs, Bayrak's score and Çartık's lighting, occasionally crowded out the darker emotional register of the text.

The production reached a bigger room in 2026. Tiyatro Dergisi announced on 25 February 2026 that ENKA Sanat would present it at the ENKA Oditoryumu on 3 March 2026, describing it as a daring, festive story of friendship rooted in the traditions of the land. Alongside it, tiyatrolar.com.tr lists Akakçe as still active in Mercaniye Çok Yaşa from 2024, Sonbahara Son Güller from 2022, a Romeo ve Juliet from 2021 and the long-running Haldun Taner Kabare: Dün Bugün, which he joined in 2015.

Where he stands in September 2026

Akakçe turned 50 in December 2025 and is, unusually for a Turkish actor of his television profile, spending the autumn touring two ensemble comedies rather than a solo vehicle. Tiyatro Hayali's diary for the 2026–27 season opens with Meçhul Paşa at Sahne Dragos on 15 September and Kadıköy Eğitim Sahnesi on 18 September, then moves to the European side for Trump Sahne on 11 October and Sefaköy Kültür ve Sanat Merkezi on 16 October, before travelling to BAOB Sahne in Bursa on 20 October and the MEB Şura Salonu in Ankara on 2 November.

Şebbaz threads through the same weeks: Kadıköy Eğitim Sahnesi on 22 September, Sahne Dragos on 8 October, Küçükçekmece's Cennet Kültür ve Sanat Merkezi on 19 October, the Watergarden Performans Merkezi in Ataşehir on 21 October, Caddebostan Kültür Merkezi on 27 October, then Bursa on 5 November and İzmir's Bostanlı Suat Taşer Salonu on 7 November. Istanbul tickets start at 600 lira, with the larger halls in Ankara, Caddebostan and İzmir priced from 700. Nothing about that schedule suggests an actor coasting on a television name; it looks like a repertory player in the middle of the most productive stretch of his stage career.