German TV to broadcast Turkish lottery winner’s life

Ece Çelik - ISTANBUL

A German TV station has signed a deal with the Turkish lottery winner and will broadcast his life in a reality show.

Though he has been “rocking Germany for a month” and German TV channels and dailies show great interest, he still has not received any offer from Turkish ones, Kürşat Yıldırım told daily Hürriyet. “However, my life story is suitable for being a movie or a series.”

He won nearly 10 million euros in the latest German lottery.

“Now we have signed a 1-year contract with a German channel, they will broadcast my life as a reality show,” he said, adding that he even added a clause to the contract that he would go to Türkiye if an offer comes from there.

Kürşat moved to Dortmund, the third-largest city in North Rhine-Westphalia, with his family when he was 12 years old.

Starting work life as an apprentice at an auto mechanic shop, he then became a crane operator and had been working at the German company ThyssenKrupp since then.

His life changed in Sept. 24, when he won a total of 9.927 million euros in the lottery. Leaving the ticket in a drawer and forgetting the draw, Kürşat moved on with his life. He remembered the existence of the ticket when he learnt from his friends that the lottery winner was from Dortmund.

Running to his house to look at the ticket and the winning numbers, he found out that he was a millionaire from then.

“I directly called my boss and said, ‘I am rich,’ and quit the job,” he said and went to say: “Then I bought a Ferrari and a Porsche.”

Stating that he is from Geycek village of the central Anatolian province of Kırşehir’s Mucur district, Yıldırım said he receives many messages from Kırşehir residents: “I love Kırşehir very much. Everyone says to me, ‘Go to Miami, go to Dubai,’ but I’m still in the house where I live with my parents.”

He plans to do charity work with the lottery he won. “I will donate to orphaned children here at Christmas and I want to drill a water well in Africa.”