Salih Bademci

Bornova, then the conservatory

Bademci was born on 15 August 1984, finished school at Bornova Anatolian High School in İzmir and trained in the theatre department of İstanbul University's State Conservatory. Reference filmographies date his first credit to 1994 and a childhood appearance in the film Mıymıntılar Kralı, which means he arrived at drama school with camera work already behind him rather than after it. His first adult screen part of any size came in 2006, as Cenk in Serdar Akar's Barda.

His early stage jobs were taken with other people's companies. He played in Molière's The Miser at Kent Oyuncuları in 2009, then Marius von Mayenburg's Fireface in 2010 with Siyah Beyaz ve Renkli, the collective he helped set up, and Hagop Baronyan's The Oriental Dentist at İstanbul City Theatre in 2011. Annemin Cinayet Listesi followed in 2012. None of it was commercial comedy: Mayenburg and Baronyan are awkward, formally odd choices for an actor who was about to become a television face.

The screen decade

Television made him known. He played Hakan Tatlı across Öyle Bir Geçer Zaman ki from 2010 to 2013, Şehzade Bayezid in Fatih in 2013, and then two long leads back to back: Sinan Karakaya in Kiralık Aşk from 2015 to 2017, and Fikret Boran in İstanbullu Gelin from 2017 to 2019. The second of those, a controlling and increasingly dangerous brother, is the part that established what he is usually cast as now — men whose damage is the engine of the plot rather than its decoration.

Streaming sharpened the same line. He led İlk ve Son in 2021, played Selim Songür in Kulüp across its 2021 and 2022 seasons, took the lead in Dilek Taşı in 2023 and has played Dimitri in Terzi since 2023. The awards followed the screen work rather than the stage work: best supporting actor at the Turkey Youth Awards in 2016 for Kiralık Aşk, GQ's actor of the year in 2021, and best actor at the 49th Golden Butterfly Awards in 2023, cited for Dilek Taşı, Kulüp and Terzi together.

Tesir, Aydınlıkevler and a stage habit that never lapsed

The stage work did not stop while the series ran. In the 2014–15 season he appeared in Lucy Prebble's The Effect — staged in Turkish as Tesir — with Siyah Beyaz ve Renkli, and in Koffi Kwahulé's Big Shoot at Tiyatrops. Tesir brought him the selection committee's special award at the 20th Sadri Alışık Theatre and Cinema Awards in 2015, the only significant prize he holds for theatre. Turkish theatre listings also credit him with Senaryo in 2018, Fanatik and Varlık in 2020 and Ay Tedirginliği in 2021, a steadier run than most actors manage while shooting daily drama.

His largest ensemble stage role came in 2022 with Aydınlıkevler, a BKM production written by Yılmaz Erdoğan and directed by Serdar Biliş, set in 1970s Ankara around a high-school boy and his grandmother. Demet Akbağ played Zühre, Burak Dakak the boy Ayhan, Sinem Ünsal his sister, and Bademci the lovesick painter Süreyya. It ran two acts and roughly 120 minutes on a revolving set with animation projected behind it. Reviewing it in Hürriyet on 16 July 2022, Bahar Çuhadar called his Süreyya "nefis" while faulting the production for tonal inconsistency and dialogue too modern for the decade it depicts.

Sesler: a commission that outlived its festival

Sesler began as a text commissioned by the İstanbul Theatre Festival for İstanbul Mon Amour, a strand of new Istanbul-specific writing the festival has run since 2022. Kerem Kurdoğlu wrote it, Mehmet Birkiye directed, and Bademci performed it in the 28th festival on 8 and 9 November 2024 at Metrohan — about 45 minutes long, unnumbered seating, the programme describing a man who collects the sounds of the city.

It was rebuilt as a full evening for the commercial season and premiered on 3 April 2025 at Maximum UNIQ in Istanbul: one act, around 60 minutes, no interval. The design team stayed in place — set and lighting by Cem Yılmazer, sound and effects by Oğuzhan Akalın, music by Şahin Kureta — with Şermin Ekinci producing and Sercan Apak as executive producer for YSM Yapım. The opening question is whether an audience can remember the first sound it ever retained; the argument that follows is that silence is itself a sound, and audible to anyone who knows how to listen.

Handan Salta, reviewing a Paribu Art performance for Tiyatro Dergisi on 20 May 2026, described it as a lecture performance built from five sonic set pieces: the conquest of Istanbul, the May Day killings of 1977, a Thursday market in Karaköy, the riots of 6–7 September 1955, and a private childhood memory about cassette tapes and a present from a father. A long table loaded with instruments and sound-making objects dominates the stage; Senanur Altın appeared alongside Bademci in that staging. Salta credited him with modest choices that put the text in front of the performer, and read the whole piece as a love letter to the city that also asks something of the people living in it.

Where he stands in September 2026

On screen, his current job is Delikanlı, an OGM Pictures series for Show TV produced by Onur Güvenatam, which began airing on 6 April 2026 with Mert Ramazan Demir, Melis Sezen, Mina Demirtaş and Devrim Yakut. Bademci plays the elder brother Sarp Kızılhan. Talking to Habertürk on the day of the premiere, he described Sarp as a man shaped by childhood trauma who treats having survived as a debt to be repaid, and who "defines love through control, security through pressure and power through fear".

On stage, Sesler is now the piece he tours rather than a limited run, and Turkish theatre listings place a stage version of The Picture of Dorian Gray among his 2026 productions. Fourteen Sesler dates are currently on sale, running from early October to mid-December 2026 and taking the show well outside Istanbul — an unusual amount of road work for a solo show by an actor who could fill a television schedule instead.