-An vs -DIK: Which Relative Participle

Turkish has no relative pronoun — no who, which, or that. Instead, the verb inside the relative clause turns into a participle, and you choose between two of them: -An and -DIK. English speakers find this hard because English uses the same word that for "the man that came" and "the man that I saw". Turkish forces you to decide what role the head noun plays in the embedded clause, and the choice is mechanical once you know the test. This page gives you that single test; for the full forms see the -An participle, the -DIK participle, and the relative clauses overview.

The one test

Ask: inside the relative clause, is the head noun the subject — the one doing the action — or not?

• If the head noun does the action, use -An. The man who came → the man does the coming → gelen adam.
• If the head noun is the object (or any other non-subject), use -DIK plus a possessive that names the real subject. The man I saw → I do the seeing, the man is seen → gördüğüm adam.

That is the whole decision. Everything else is detail.

Same noun, adam, in both. In the first, adam is the subject of gelmek (he came) — so -An. In the second, adam is the object of görmek (I saw him) — so -DIK, and the -üm on gördüğüm tells you the subject is "I".

A minimal pair on the same noun

Watch how a single noun, kişi ("person"), flips between the two participles depending on its role.

In arayan kişi, the person is the one phoning — subject of aramak — so -An. In aradığım kişi, I am phoning and the person is the one being called — the head is the object — so -DIK with first-person -ım. The possessive ending is doing the work English does with the pronoun I: aradığım literally packages "[the one] that I called".

-DIK carries the subject in its ending

Because -DIK marks a clause whose subject is someone other than the head, you must say who that subject is. Turkish does this with a possessive suffix on the participle, and (if you name the subject as a separate word) that subject takes the genitive.

Here the genitive senin ("your") and the possessive -ın on aldığın agree: the bread is the thing bought, you are the buyer.

Future non-subject: -(y)AcAK

When the head noun is a non-subject and the action is still to come, -DIK is replaced by -(y)AcAK, again with a possessive. It is the future twin of -DIK.

For a future subject relative ("the man who will come"), you stay with -An's future partner only in limited ways; the common everyday solution is still gelecek olan adam or simply gelecek adam, but for non-subjects -(y)AcAK + possessive is the standard pattern shown above.

Sound changes inside -DIK

Two orthographic points trip learners up, and both are non-negotiable in spelling.

First, -DIK is four-way harmonic and its initial consonant alternates D/T after voiceless stems: gör- → gördük-, yaz- → yazdık-, but yap- → yaptık-, iç- → içtik-.

Second — and this is the big one — when a possessive vowel follows, the final k softens to ğ: gördük + -üm → gördüğüm, not gördüküm. This k → ğ softening happens before every possessive ending.

The same softening applies to -(y)AcAK: okuyacak + -ım → okuyacağım.

When the head is an adverbial role

The head noun can be a place, time, or instrument inside the clause — still non-subject, so still -DIK, often with a possessive and sometimes a case ending or a postposition. Word-order rules for these stack the same way as object relatives; see relative clause word order.

Here kafe is the place where we sat — not the subject — so -DIK (oturduğumuz, "that we sat at").

Common mistakes

The number-one error is using -An for an object relative, because English uses the same that for both.

Forgetting the k → ğ softening before the possessive:

Putting a possessive on -An (it never takes one, because the head is already the subject):

Using -DIK for a future non-subject instead of -(y)AcAK:

Leaving out the genitive on a named subject:

Key takeaways

• One test decides everything: inside the clause, is the head noun the subject/actor (-An) or a non-subject/acted-upon (-DIK)?
• -An = subject relative, no possessive: gelen adam (the man who came), beni arayan kişi (the person who called me).
• -DIK + possessive = object/other non-subject relative, with the possessive naming the real subject: gördüğüm adam (the man I saw), aradığım kişi (the person I called).
• For a future non-subject, swap -DIK for -(y)AcAK: okuyacağım kitap (the book I'll read).
• Spelling is automatic and mandatory: a named subject takes the genitive, and the final k softens to ğ before a possessive — gördüğüm, aldığın, okuyacağım.