Erdal Beşikçioğlu, mayor of Etimesgut, a satellite town of the capital, has been arrested. The charge against him is much the same as those leveled at other CHP mayors: 'Forming a criminal organization for the purpose of corruption.' But Beşikçioğlu is not just a mayor — or rather, his fame doesn't come from being one. He's a theater, television and film actor. He was already well known before he was ever elected mayor.
‘CHIEF’
It was a television series that first introduced Beşikçioğlu to a wide audience. Behzat Ç., 'an Ankara police drama,' in which he played the lead role of a police superintendent. At a time when television dramas and films were dominated by Istanbul, Behzat Ç. was shot in Ankara.
It became the most-watched series in the country for weeks on end. And Beşikçioğlu picked up a nickname from his role — 'Chief' (Amirim), a form of address for a police officer's superior. Beşikçioğlu played in a film that comes closest to foreshadowing his turn to public office: in Vali ('The Governor'), he played the late provincial governor Recep Yazıcıoğlu. And no account of Beşikçioğlu would be complete without his stage work — he's the actor behind a long-running, sold-out solo production of Gogol's celebrated Diary of a Madman.
MAYOR AT WORK
The idea of running for mayor actually came to him at the height of his career. He received the offer to run for Etimesgut in the 2024 local elections — held, as usual, during one of the CHP's most turbulent stretches — and won. Whether he'd ever considered this kind of half-political, half-public-service role before, we don't know. But the fact that he kept acting in television series while serving as mayor is telling in itself. Continuing to make films while in office suggests where his real priority lay. In his police interrogation, the pony-tailed 56-year-old said that shooting the series had helped promote Etimesgut.
ETİMESGUT: FROM WHAT TO WHAT
Etimesgut used to be one of Ankara's outlying districts, back when the city’s real life played out between Çankaya, Keçiören, Yenimahalle, Altındağ, and Mamak. Over the past two or three decades, it has grown into a district with a metropolitan identity of its own, now home to more than 600,000 people.
It's also worth noting that Beşikçioğlu's win in a district long governed by right-wing parties owed something to Etimesgut's growing and changing population: white-collar, well-educated voters settling into newly built housing developments proved decisive.
Beşikçioğlu is now in prison, awaiting trial, with ample time to reflect on his past career and what lies ahead. Imprisonment is also, in its way, a reckoning. And a person's harshest judge is never the court — it's themselves. Beşikçioğlu, too, now faces that test.
