The Turkish Detective has gone down a storm with viewers since landing on the BBC in July. The series, which is based on Barbara Nadel's bestselling Inspector Ikmen novel series, follows London Met detective Detective Mehmet Süleyman, who lands a job in Istanbul's homicide unit led by eccentric Inspector Çetin Ikmen. Viewers have wasted no time binge-watching the word-of-mouth hit and have urged the BBC to commission a second season, which has yet to be green-lit.
Ethan Kai and Yasemin Kay Allen, who star as Süleyman and his police colleague Ayşe Farsakoğlu, sat down with HELLO! for an exclusive interview about season two. Warning! Spoilers for episode eight ahead! Series one ended with a huge plot twist as Süleyman discovered that his estranged father was responsible for supplying the dangerous drug Kayra Khan to the streets of Istanbul and that his ex-girlfriend Leyla had gotten close to exposing him before she was run down by a car. On what he'd like to happen in season two, Ethan said he'd "love" to explore Süleyman's life after discovering the truth about Leyla's hit-and-run.
"I'd certainly like to see his life beyond that and where he goes from here," said the star. "How he picks himself back up now that he's kind of settled a little bit more into Istanbul and learned the way things work." The actor, whose previous credits include Emmerdale and Killing Eve , said he'd been keen to see the evolving dynamic between crime-solving trio Süleyman, Ayşe, and Ikman (played by Haluk Bilginer).
" There will still be conflict between them but [I'd love] to continue exploring that as they go forward and in his own personal life, with everything that happened with his dad, and how he continues in the next phase of his life," he said. As for Yasemin, she's hoping to delve into Ayşe's backstory, particularly her ambiguous relationship with her father and brother. "There's so much about where she comes from, her family life and what actually happened with her father and her brother.
I would like to sort of delve a little bit more into that," said the English-Turkish actress. " She's very much a closed box and the reasons for that I would like to be able to explore. I feel like she's at the precipice of actualisation, she's still growing.
"I would love to be able to just delve back into her and just grow with her and just see what else there is to explore about her, that would be amazing," added the Strike Back star. While the BBC has yet to make any announcements about a second season, writer Ben Schiffer has "loads of ideas" for where the story could go. "There's a kind of cliffhanger element at the end of the last episode, or definitely a mystery to be solved," he told HELLO! .
"I've definitely got loads of ideas jotted away of what we could do. I think that's one of the lovely things about the show is we could do loads of it and that would be great.".
