Ersin Korkut

A taxi, a sink, and a cousin who ran a theatre

Ersin Korkut was born on 8 November 1977 in Hakkâri, in the far south-east of Turkey, and of Kurdish descent. Before any of the work that made him recognisable, he drove a taxi in his home town. When he moved to Istanbul he took a job washing dishes at a pizzeria in Merter, one of the city's garment districts.

The turn came through family. His cousin is the writer-director Yılmaz Erdoğan, who found him working at the pizzeria and brought him into Beşiktaş Kültür Merkezi in 2000. That is the standard entry route for a generation of Turkish comic actors, and Korkut took the slow version of it: he started on the production side rather than in front of an audience.

His first credited stage work came in 2003 with the BKM play Bana Bir Şeyler Oluyor. He had been part of the backstage crew, read the script, and decided one of the parts was within his range. Erdoğan's reported reaction was that these things are not so easy. Korkut's answer was that he trusted himself. He got the role, and the anecdote has followed him for more than two decades — it is now, in a looser form, part of the material in his current show.

Twenty years of sketch comedy

Television absorbed most of the next two decades. Korkut appeared in Bir Demet Tiyatro in 2006 and then in Çok Güzel Hareketler Bunlar from 2008 to 2011, the sketch series that functioned as a training ground for the whole BKM circle. He played İhsan in Çocuklar Duymasın in 2010 and took a part in Alemin Kıralı in 2011.

Scripted roles followed. He was Komiser Ahmet Tekin across Galip Derviş in 2013 and 2014, Rafet in Bana Baba Dedi in 2015, and Selim in Dostlar Mahallesi in 2017. In 2020 he returned to sketch work for Çok Güzel Hareketler 2. Alongside this ran a long line of advertising work — Doritos in 2004, Eti in 2010, Vodafone in 2014, IKEA in 2018 — which is a large part of why his face carries recognition well beyond the people who buy theatre tickets.

Two spells on Survivor widened that audience again. He joined the 2020 series but withdrew on 12 May 2020 after an injury, and came back for Survivor 2024: All Star. Speaking to Milliyet on 2 January 2024, before the All Star run, he said the water games worried him most, having nearly drowned during an earlier contest, and named Turabi as the competitor he expected to win, seeing something of his own story in his. Asked about Erdoğan, he described him as father, older brother and employer in one person, adding that he always has the last word.

The box-office ledger

Korkut's film career runs on two franchises. He played Ersin in Organize İşler, released on 23 December 2005, which drew around 2.6 million admissions. He then became Asım in Kutsal Damacana from 2007 and has returned to the part repeatedly — Kutsal Damacana: Dracoola in 2011, Kutsal Damacana 4 on 20 January 2023, and Kutsal Damacana 5: Zombi on 17 January 2025.

The biggest single result of his career came with Organize İşler: Sazan Sarmalı on 1 February 2019, which sold roughly 3.5 million tickets. Between those, he worked steadily through Turkish mainstream comedy and drama: Neşeli Hayat in 2009, Patron Mutlu Son İstiyor in 2014, İçimdeki Ses in 2015, Şino in Ekşi Elmalar in 2016, and Salih in Kolonya Cumhuriyeti in 2017, the last of which cleared about 1.1 million admissions.

His most recent cinema release was Ketenpere: Dalavere on 9 January 2026, directed by Doğuş Onur Karasu, in which he appears as a prince in a film-within-a-film. It had recorded 214,749 admissions and around 45.9 million lira by the time of writing — a modest performer by the standards of his 2019 peak, and a reminder that the Turkish comedy audience has shifted towards streaming.

The stage work he says he prefers

Korkut has been direct about which medium he rates. In the same January 2024 interview he said he prefers theatre, on the grounds that there is no luxury of forgetting a line on stage, and that he has become selective about television parts. He has also said that without acting he would most likely have ended up working theatre lighting or sets.

His main touring vehicle through the 2020s has been İyi Kötü Çirkin, written by Eray Yasin Işık and directed by Ahmet Burak Bacınoğlu, a four-hander in which Korkut appears alongside Hakan Bulut, Bacınoğlu and Işık. It runs two acts and roughly 120 minutes, and is sold with a lower age limit of twelve. The story follows a man whose only real fault is decency: he is betrayed, misread and punished without cause, holds to his principles anyway, and then one day decides to change. The register is satirical rather than farcical, with the comedy pushed through a tragic plot.

The production has been on the road for years and reached well beyond the main cities. Talking in Diyarbakır in April 2021 while touring the play, Korkut called the city the capital of civilisations and culture and told anyone who did not know it to come and see it.

October 2026: a franchise reopened

The most consequential recent development arrived on 16 October 2026, when Netflix released Organize İşler: Karun Hazinesi, an eight-episode series written by Yılmaz Erdoğan and directed by Şenol Sönmez. The plot sends Asım Noyan and his crew after a treasure map, chased by rivals and international hunters. Korkut is in the ensemble alongside Erdoğan, Kıvanç Tatlıtuğ, Ezgi Mola, Uraz Kaygılaroğlu, Rıza Kocaoğlu, Okan Çabalar, Bensu Soral Baş, Atakan Çelik, Şükran Ovalı, Görkem Sevindik and Demet Akbağ.

The timing is not accidental. The series dropped two weeks before Korkut's solo stage run opened on 1 November 2026, which puts his most widely watched work and his most exposed work in front of the same audience in the same six weeks.

Playing himself

Ben mi Yapmışım? is a one-man show written and directed by Eray Yasin Işık from Korkut's own account of his life, produced by Orbit Production House. The framing is explicit in the billing: this time he is not playing a character, he is playing himself.

The material tracks the route already sketched above — childhood and youth in Hakkâri, the move to Istanbul, the acting years, the well-known people he met on the way up, and the absurdities that arrived with recognition. The show leans on stories that are by turns funny, strange, and implausible enough that an audience is invited to wonder whether they happened at all, which is a reasonable bet for a performer whose actual biography includes going from a pizzeria sink to a three-and-a-half-million-ticket film.

It is also an exposed piece of work for him. Having spent twenty years inside ensembles, sketch teams and four-handers, he is carrying a full evening alone, on a text drawn from his own life, with no co-stars to hand the room to.