Erden Alkan

Erden Alkan — Biography

Erden Alkan is an actor who worked in both Turkish and German productions, and whose career is divided between the two countries; the wider public knows him as Candar Bey in Diriliş: Ertuğrul and as Çandarlı Halil Pasha in Fetih 1453. In Germany he is also noted as a theatre founder, playwright and director, and he holds dual citizenship.

After graduating from Vefa High School he studied acting at the Max Reinhardt Theatre School in Vienna. His film debut was Ölüm Emri in 1970, and during Yeşilçam's busy years, especially the early 1970s, he appeared in dozens of films, among them Battal Gazi Destanı, Tophaneli Murat, Kanlı Öç, Kaderin Pençesi and Gönülden Yaralılar. His weight then shifted to Germany, with Wolffs Revier, the Tatort episode Brandwunden, Mordkommission Istanbul and Evet, ich will!.

He returned to Turkish television in 2004 with Mavi Rüya, followed by Kollama, Gazi, Yalan Dünya and Gece Gündüz. Fetih 1453 in 2012, then Yılanların Öcü and Diriliş: Ertuğrul, formed the last major phase of his career; he left the series in early 2017. Later work includes Beyaz Balina and Deliler: Fatih'in Fermanı. In his private life he married a Swedish woman to whom he had been engaged in his youth, decades after they parted.