Tuncay Akça

Tuncay Akça — Biography

Tuncay Akça came up as a child performer in Yeşilçam and kept working into adulthood as a Turkish character actor. In the Hababam Sınıfı films he played "Bacaksız", the boy laughing at the drenched pupils, and his line "Abi siz neden her sabah tek ayak üzerinde duruyorsunuz?" is still associated with him. He appeared in more than a hundred films and series and died in 2024.

He was shining shoes in Istanbul when he turned up at the set of Ertem Eğilmez's Hababam Sınıfı; his laugh caught attention and he was given a short part. The next step was the 1979 children's film Bebek, in which he played Apo, a boy who comes from Kâhta to Istanbul looking for his father; the lead role earned him a special award from the film writers' association SİYAD. On the strength of that performance he joined the cast of Şerif Gören's Yol, the Palme d'Or winner at Cannes, as Yusuf, the prisoner who goes on leave with his bird. He played Memidik in Yer Demir Gök Bakır (1987) and came back to Bacaksız years later in Hababam Sınıfı Merhaba (2004). On television he reached a wide audience between 1995 and 2002 as Adem in Bizimkiler.

In the 2000s he entered politics: he stood for the Ümraniye municipal council in 2004 and for mayor of Sancaktepe (Samandıra) in 2009, and joined the İYİ Parti on 5 August 2022. He also founded a sports club to keep young people away from drugs. He died in Istanbul on 17 August 2024 and was buried in Karacaahmet Cemetery.