How to Conjugate Turkish Verbs: Personal Endings, Five Tenses, Negation and Questions

How a Turkish verb is built

A Turkish verb is a stem followed by suffixes. Dictionaries list the infinitive, which ends in -mak or -mek. Remove that ending and the stem is left: gelmek gives gel- (come), yapmak gives yap- (do).

The suffixes after the stem come in a fixed order: negation, then tense, then person. A positive verb leaves the negation slot empty. So gel- with the negative -me, the future -yecek and the ending -sin gives gelmeyeceksin, you will not come.

Each suffix adjusts its vowels, and sometimes its first consonant, to the verb it joins. This article writes suffixes the way Göksel and Kerslake do in Turkish: A Comprehensive Grammar. A stands for e or a, I for ı, i, u or ü, and D for d or t. A letter in brackets appears only in some positions.

The rules behind those capitals are vowel harmony and the consonant changes. A companion article on this blog, The Turkish Suffix System Explained, sets them out. This one applies them to verbs, tense by tense, and the tables give the finished forms.

Personal endings: two sets

The person comes last, and Turkish has two sets of endings for it. The tense suffix before the ending decides which set a verb takes.

Set 1 goes with the present continuous, the aorist, the future and the reported past. These are the same endings that turn a noun into a sentence: öğretmenim, I am a teacher. After a vowel, the ben and biz endings add a buffer y: hastayım (I am ill), gelmeliyim (I must come).

Set 2 goes with the -DI past and the conditional -sA. Its endings are shorter, and the first person plural ends in k: geldik (we came), gelsek (if we came).

The third person singular has no ending in either set, so geliyor on its own means he, she or it is coming. Because the ending already names the person, the pronoun is usually left out.

The present continuous: -(I)yor

The present continuous says what is happening now: Şu an çalışıyorum, I am working right now. It is also the usual tense for states, as in biliyorum (I know) and seni seviyorum (I love you). With a time word it can announce a plan: Yarın gidiyorum, I am leaving tomorrow.

It is usually the first tense a course teaches, and Dilsever teaches it at A1. It takes the set 1 endings, which a learner already knows from noun sentences.

After a consonant, the stem takes a four-way vowel and then yor: gel- gives geliyor, yap- gives yapıyor, gör- gives görüyor. The yor never changes, and the endings after it follow its o: geliyorum, geliyorsunuz.

A stem ending in a or e loses that vowel, and the four-way vowel takes its place. It harmonizes with the vowel before the lost one: başla- gives başlıyor, bekle- gives bekliyor, söyle- gives söylüyor. A stem ending in ı, i, u or ü simply adds yor: oku- gives okuyor, yürü- gives yürüyor.

The negative -mA goes between the stem and -yor, and its vowel narrows in the same way: gelmiyor, yapmıyor, okumuyor.

The aorist: -Ar, -Ir or -r

The aorist, geniş zaman in Turkish, covers habits and general truths: Her sabah kahve içerim, I drink coffee every morning. It also makes polite requests (Kapıyı açar mısın? Could you open the door?) and promises (Yarın ararım, I will call tomorrow).

Dilsever teaches it at A2, after the -DI past and the future. It takes the set 1 endings. Its suffix depends on the shape of the stem.

A stem ending in a vowel takes -r: okur, bekler, yürür. A consonant-final stem of two or more syllables takes -Ir: konuşur, çalışır, oturur. A consonant-final stem of one syllable takes -Ar: yapar, bakar, yazar, içer, sever.

That last rule has exceptions. Göksel and Kerslake list 13 one-syllable stems that take -Ir instead, and most of them are among the commonest verbs in the language. They have to be learned as a list.

For a one-syllable verb, the TDK Güncel Türkçe Sözlük settles the question. Each entry gives the aorist ending, as in almak, -ır and yapmak, -ar.

The negative aorist is irregular in a different way. It uses -mAz, but the first persons take -mA and no z: gelmem (I do not come), gelmeyiz (we do not come). The other persons keep the z: gelmezsin, gelmez, gelmezsiniz, gelmezler.

The past: -DI and -mIş

Turkish has two simple past tenses, and the choice between them depends on how you know what happened. The suffix -DI is for what you saw, or what you treat as established fact: Dün sinemaya gittim, I went to the cinema yesterday.

It takes the set 2 endings: geldim, geldin, geldi, geldik, geldiniz, geldiler. Its D becomes t after a voiceless consonant: gitti, yaptı, içti, konuştu, baktı. The stem does not soften before it, so git- stays git- in gitti.

The suffix -mIş reports what you heard, read or worked out from evidence. Ali gelmiş means Ali has come, because someone told you or you can see his coat. It also marks a discovery: Kar yağmış! It has snowed! (said on opening the curtains).

It takes the set 1 endings: gelmişim, gelmişsin, gelmiş, gelmişiz, gelmişsiniz, gelmişler. Its vowel follows four-way harmony: almış, okumuş, görmüş. Dilsever teaches -DI at A2 and -mIş at B1.

The future: -(y)AcAk

The future follows two-way harmony: gelecek, yapacak. After a vowel it starts with a buffer y: okuyacak, bekleyecek. It takes the set 1 endings.

Before an ending that starts with a vowel, its final k softens to ğ: geleceğim (I will come), yapacağız (we will do it). Before a consonant the k stays: geleceksin, yapacaklar.

The stem changes from the present continuous apply here too: yiyecek, diyecek, gidecek, edecek. The negative puts -mA in front of it, with the buffer y: gelmeyecek, yapmayacak.

In everyday speech the future is often shortened, so geleceğim sounds closer to gelicem. It is still written in full.

Negation and questions

Negation is the suffix -mA, placed right after the stem: gelmiyor, gelmedi, gelmeyecek, gelmemiş. The aorist is the one tense with its own negative suffix, -mAz, as described above.

Questions use the particle mI. It is written as a separate word, but it harmonizes like a suffix: geliyor mu, geldi mi, gelir mi, gelecek mi.

Where the person ending goes depends on the set. With set 1 tenses it moves onto mI: geliyor musun (are you coming?), gelecek misiniz (will you come?), gelir misin (would you come?). The third person plural keeps -lAr on the verb: geliyorlar mı.

The set 2 tenses are the -DI past and the conditional. With them the ending stays on the verb and mI comes last: geldin mi (did you come?), geldiniz mi.

A negative question combines the two: gelmiyor musun (aren’t you coming?), gelmedin mi (didn’t you come?). The table gives every person of gelmek in the five tenses above.

Are there irregular verbs in Turkish?

Not in the English sense. No Turkish verb swaps its stem the way go becomes went, and every verb takes the same suffixes. What a learner does meet is a short list of places where the general rule gives the wrong form.

Two of them are in the aorist: the 13 stems that take -Ir (gelir, not geler), and the negative first persons without z (gelmem, gelmeyiz).

The third is ye- (eat) and de- (say). Before -(I)yor and most suffixes that begin with y, their e becomes i: yiyor, diyor, yiyecek, diyecek, yiyen, diyerek. Before a consonant it stays e: yedi, dedi, yer, der.

The fourth is softening. A few verbs, above all git- (go) and et- (do), turn t into d before a vowel: gidiyor, gidecek, gider; ediyor, edecek, eder. Before a consonant the t stays: gitti, gitmiyor.

The verb et- matters more than its size suggests. It builds many compound verbs from nouns: teşekkür ederim (thank you), ziyaret ediyor (he or she is visiting).

Not every verb ending in t softens: bitmek gives bitiyor and yatmak gives yatıyor. The TDK dictionary settles it, because the aorist ending in each entry shows the stem: gitmek, -der, but bitmek, -er.

The verb olmak (to be, to become) follows the same patterns as the rest: oluyor, oldu, olacak, and olur from the list of 13. What Turkish lacks is a present-tense verb for to be. I am a teacher is öğretmenim, with the set 1 ending on the noun. The past adds -DI straight to the noun: öğretmendim, I was a teacher. The future needs olmak: öğretmen olacağım, I will be a teacher.

The verbs in Dilsever’s Conjugation Lab

Dilsever’s Conjugation Lab drills 24 verbs: 18 at A1 and 6 at A2. The table lists each one with its meaning and its ben form in the present continuous and the aorist.

Most of the changes above appear in this list. In the present continuous, gidiyorum softens, yiyorum changes its vowel, and bekliyorum and söylüyorum lose a final e. In the aorist, gelirim, alırım, veririm, görürüm, bilirim and olurum come from the list of 13.

The lab drills the positive forms of four tenses (present continuous, aorist, past and future) in all six persons. A Drill asks for one person at a time, and a Table Challenge asks for all six. Each form is split into root, tense and person, and the lab flags a root that changes, such as gid- in gidiyorum.

Every form can be played aloud, from audio pre-rendered by a Turkish neural voice. Verbs you have learned come back for review on a spaced-repetition schedule.