Necati Şaşmaz

Necati Şaşmaz — Biography

Muhammed Necati Şaşmaz, the eldest son of a family of Zaza origin, was born on 15 December 1971 in the Harput district of Elazığ. He studied tourism and hotel management in Turkey and Canada and then lived in the United States for six years; he happened to be visiting family in Turkey around the time of the 11 September 2001 attacks and, with his return flight disrupted, chose to stay. After opening an insurance agency in Ankara, he was introduced through his brother Raci Şaşmaz to director Osman Sınav, who offered him his first acting role.

Cast as Polat Alemdar in the series Kurtlar Vadisi, which began in 2003, Şaşmaz became one of Turkey's most recognizable faces; he reprised the character in the spin-offs Irak, Terör, Pusu, Filistin and Vatan, also taking writing and producing credits. In 2009 he founded a news site called Yazete. He married Nagehan Kaşıkçı in 2012 and the couple had two sons; a contentious divorce filed in 2019 was finalized in 2021, and he was acquitted in a related case brought by his wife and father-in-law.