Academic and expository Turkish is built on a single principle: maximise impersonality. The writer disappears, the agent disappears, and the sentence becomes a structure of suffix-stacked nouns connected by impersonal verbs. Two morphemes signal this register at a glance — -mAktAdIr (the formal present) and the assertive copula -DIr — and once you can spot them, you can recalibrate your reading from “who is doing what” to “what is asserted about what.” The paragraph below is an original essay, written for this guide in academic register; it argues nothing controversial, but it behaves exactly like a scholarly text.
The paragraph
Dil, yalnızca bir iletişim aracı değil, aynı zamanda toplumsal belleğin taşıyıcısıdır.
Language is not merely a means of communication but at the same time the carrier of social memory.
The opening sentence already plants the register flag: taşıyıcısıdır (“is the carrier”) ends in the assertive -DIr. In everyday speech you would simply say taşıyıcısı with no copula; the explicit -DIr here is not “is” in the ordinary sense but a marker of generalised, authoritative assertion — “it is the case, as a general truth, that…”. See verbs that govern this in register/scientific. Note also the suffix-hardening: after the voiceless consonant the suffix would surface as -tır, but here on the vowel-final stem it stays -dır; getting that voicing right is part of reading and writing the register correctly.
Bu işlev, kuşaktan kuşağa aktarılan kültürel kodlar aracılığıyla yerine getirilmektedir.
This function is fulfilled by means of cultural codes transmitted from generation to generation.
Here is the register's signature verb form. yerine getirilmektedir breaks down as yerine getir- (“fulfil”) + the passive -il + the formal present -mAktA + the assertive -DIr. That is four layers on one stem, and the result has no personal subject at all — the function “is being fulfilled,” by no one in particular. This -mAktAdIr is the academic counterpart of everyday -Iyor: same present-time meaning, but flagged for formal, expository prose. See complex/maktadir-formal-present. The agent is suppressed entirely; only the instrument survives, marked by aracılığıyla (“by means of”).
-Iyor; it is the same present, dressed for the academy. Where a conversation says aktarılıyor (“is being transmitted”), an article says aktarılmaktadır. Reading academic Turkish means treating -mAktAdIr as a register signal, not a new piece of semantics.Söz konusu kodların korunmasının, bir toplumun kimliğini sürdürebilmesi açısından belirleyici olduğu kabul edilmektedir.
It is accepted that the preservation of the codes in question is decisive for a society's being able to sustain its identity.
This sentence is a masterclass in nominalisation, and it is exactly where English speakers founder. There are no personal subjects; instead, whole clauses have been turned into nouns. kodların korunması is “the preservation of the codes” (a -mA nominalisation with a genitive subject), and kimliğini sürdürebilmesi is “its being able to sustain its identity” (another -mA nominalisation, this time built on the ability stem -Abil). The matrix verb is the impersonal passive kabul edilmektedir (“it is accepted”). To read this you must peel: start at the final verb, identify that it is impersonal, then unwrap each nominalised argument. The reward is a sentence that says, with total detachment, “preservation is decisive — this is accepted.”
Bununla birlikte, dilsel mirasın yalnızca korunmasıyla yetinilemeyeceği vurgulanmalıdır.
That said, it must be emphasised that one cannot be content with merely the preservation of the linguistic heritage.
Two more register devices arrive together. yetinilemeyeceği stacks yetin- (“be content”) + passive/impersonal -il + negative ability -AmA + future -AcAk + the nominaliser, yielding “that one will not be able to be content with” — a fully impersonal modal nominalisation. And the matrix verb vurgulanmalıdır (“it must be emphasised”) fuses the passive -In with the necessity suffix -mAlI and the assertive -DIr. The whole sentence has no human in it, yet it issues an obligation. This is the impersonal passive doing argumentative work; see syntax/impersonal-passive.
Aksi takdirde, kültürel sürekliliğin sağlanması güçleşmektedir.
Otherwise, the securing of cultural continuity becomes difficult.
A cleaner sentence to land on. sürekliliğin sağlanması (“the securing of continuity”) is one more genitive-plus--mA nominalisation serving as subject, and güçleşmektedir (“becomes difficult”) closes with the formal present. Even when the verb is intransitive, the register keeps the -mAktAdIr dress on.
-mA head. The grammar is regular; the difficulty is only the depth of stacking.Why personal subjects vanish
English academic prose has been drifting toward the passive and the nominalisation for centuries (“it is widely held that…,” “the preservation of X is decisive”), so the strategy will feel familiar. What is new is that Turkish executes it morphologically rather than syntactically. Where English needs a dummy it and a chain of prepositions (“the preservation of the codes is decisive for sustaining identity”), Turkish loads the same content onto suffixes: genitive -In, nominaliser -mA, possessive -sI, plus impersonal passives. The sentence ends up shorter in words but deeper in morphology.
The trap for English speakers is expecting a personal subject. You keep waiting for the “who,” and there is none — the kodlar are not preserved by anyone, the function is not fulfilled by anyone named; the prose is engineered to keep agents out. Stop hunting for the doer. Instead, identify the impersonal matrix verb and the single nominalised clause it operates on, and the sentence resolves cleanly.
Common mistakes
❌ Bu işlev kültürel kodlar aracılığıyla yerine getiriliyor olmaktadır.
Incorrect — double-marking present with both -Iyor and -mAktA; pick one
✅ Bu işlev kültürel kodlar aracılığıyla yerine getirilmektedir.
This function is fulfilled by means of cultural codes.
❌ Kodların korunması belirleyicidir diye kabul ediyorlar.
Incorrect — reintroduces a personal subject (they) where academic register wants the impersonal passive
✅ Kodların korunmasının belirleyici olduğu kabul edilmektedir.
It is accepted that the preservation of the codes is decisive.
❌ taşıyıcısıtır
Incorrect — wrong voicing of the assertive copula on a vowel-final stem
✅ taşıyıcısıdır
is the carrier (the -DIr surfaces as -dır after a vowel).
❌ dilsel miras yalnızca korunmasıyla yetinilemez vurgulanmalıdır.
Incorrect — a finite clause cannot be the object of vurgulanmak; nominalise it
✅ dilsel mirasın yalnızca korunmasıyla yetinilemeyeceği vurgulanmalıdır.
It must be emphasised that one cannot be content with merely the preservation of the linguistic heritage.
Key takeaways
- Formal expository Turkish maximises impersonality: agents are dropped, and personal subjects are replaced by nominalised clauses.
- -mAktAdIr is the formal-register present, the academic dress of everyday
-Iyor; treat it as a register signal. - The assertive -DIr marks generalised, authoritative assertion; mind its voicing (-dır / -tır / -dur…).
- Impersonal passives (kabul edilmektedir, vurgulanmalıdır) carry the argument and even issue obligations without naming anyone.
- To read it, peel back to front: matrix verb → its single nominalised argument → that argument's genitive subject and
-mAhead.
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Start learning Turkish→Related Topics
- Academic and Scientific StyleC1 — The grammar of scholarly Turkish — the formal present -mAktAdIr, assertive -DIr, impersonal passives, and the heavy nominalization that makes academic prose impersonal and dense.
- The Formal Present -mAktA(dIr)C1 — The written, authoritative present-progressive -mAktA / -mAktAdIr — a register-marked equivalent of -(I)yor built on the locative of the -mAk infinitive.
- Impersonal and Generic StatementsB2 — How Turkish says 'one', 'you', or 'people in general' — chiefly through the impersonal passive of intransitive verbs.
- Literary Prose Excerpt (C1)C1 — An original literary paragraph annotated to reveal the inverted sentence, dense converb and participle chains, and aspectual auxiliaries at the high end of Turkish subordination.