Nihat Ziyalan

Nihat Ziyalan was born in Adana, in southern Turkey, on 26 February 1936, the eldest of six children. He grew up during the Second World War in a single-room house in a neighbourhood courtyard. He finished middle school, trained for a period at the İzmir Air Force Non-Commissioned Officer School, and later studied at the Adana Erkek Lisesi (boys' high school). As a schoolboy he became friends with Yılmaz Güney and Özdemir İnce. The three were known as "the three musketeers" and became blood brothers.

In high school he read Sait Faik, Kerime Nadir and Orhan Veli and started writing poetry. His first published poem, about the 1953 sinking of the Turkish submarine Dumlupınar, ran in the Adana newspaper Bugün. He went on to publish in the Adana magazine Salkım and then in the arts and literature pages of the Ankara magazine Pazar Postası, whose poets were first labelled the İkinci Yeni (Second New) movement in 1956. Critics note the influence of the Second New in his poetry.

After his military service he joined the Adana City Theatre as an apprentice actor, then acted with the Ankara Art Theatre after the Adana company closed. In 1966 Yılmaz Güney invited him to Istanbul, and his screen debut was At Hırsızı Banuş (1967), which Guney made for Mualla Özbek. Through the late 1960s and the 1970s he worked steadily in Yeşilçam, usually as the villain. Sources give his film total as anywhere from about 60 to about 150. Credits listed on Turkish Wikipedia include Bin Yıllık Yol (1968), Seyyit Han (1968), Öksüz (1968), Casus Kıran (1970), Dört Kabadayı (1970), Koreli Kemal (1970), Zagor (1970), Yiğitlerin Dönüşü (1970), Azrail (1971), Herşey Oğlum İçin (1971), Umutsuzlar (1971), Sev Dedi Gözlerim (1972), Sezercik Aslan Parçası (1972), Üç Kağıtçılar (1972), Babaların Günahı (1973) and Bebek Gibi Maşallah (1973). He was widely remembered as Nedim in Sezercik Aslan Parçası and shared the screen with Kadir İnanır, Hülya Koçyiğit, Ediz Hun, Lale Belkıs, Türkan Şoray, Fatma Girik and Selma Güneri. His final film was Azap, directed by and starring Türkan Şoray.

Ziyalan's first poetry book, Asık Yüzlünün Biri, appeared in 1963. His later collections were Güvercin Uçuşu (1980), Avustralya'dan Şiir (1985), Sevgili Şiir (2007), Tomurcuk Sevda (2009), Çapkın Çiçekli (2015), Eve Götür Beni Nehir (2018) and Sevdakeş (2021). He also published the novels Güneşle Damgalı (2000) and Menekşeli Konak (2004) and the story collections Kısa Pantolonlu Sevda (2001) and Severim Pazartesileri (dated 2004 or 2005 in different sources). His poems, stories and essays appeared in Yeditepe, Dost, Pazar Postası, Öküz, Adam Öykü and Papirüs, and from Australia he wrote for literary magazines and Aydınlık Kitap. His poems trace a life from an Adana childhood to an old age in Australia.

Ziyalan refused to join the wave of sex films that took over Yeşilçam at the end of the 1970s. In 1980 he left Turkey for Australia, where he sought asylum, and he lived in Sydney for the rest of his life, more than four decades. He was the father of Mustafa Ziyalan, a poet, writer and physician. Other details of his marriage and family were not made public in the death reports.

Turkish press coverage framed his move to Australia as a refusal to compromise as Turkish cinema turned to sex films, and a tribute on X called him a revolutionary film artist and poet. On his YouTube channel he described his poetic choice in his own words: he had turned to poetry, chosen the hardest road, and chosen a plain, unadorned voice so that he could reach people, insisting that plain did not mean simple.

Ziyalan is remembered as one of the defining villains of 1960s and 1970s Turkish cinema and as a member of the Adana generation that included Yılmaz Güney and Özdemir İnce. In Australia he kept writing and publishing in Turkish for more than 40 years, and readers who first knew his face from the screen came to know him as a poet. Tributes after his death called him a true Yeşilçam worker and intellectual, "the real good man of the bad-guy roles," and a friend from across the oceans who kept the heart of Turkish alive on another continent.

In 2009 Ziyalan received the first Çukurova Award (1. Çukurova Odulu), recognising his literary work and his contribution to promoting Adana and the Çukurova region.

In his later years friends opened an official Nihat Ziyalan YouTube channel, on which he read poems, talked about writers such as Yaşar Kemal and Aziz Nesin, and shared memories. Documentary channels also recorded him recalling the making of Yılmaz Güney's Umutsuzlar and stories from Guney's career, and the web series Yeşilçam Sokağı'nın Ulu Çınarları featured him as a guest.

Nihat Ziyalan died in Sydney, Australia, on 11 October 2026, aged 90. The Sydney-based magazine Kaktüs Dergisi announced his death, and Turkish national media reported it on 12 October 2026. The cause of death and funeral arrangements were not made public in those reports.