Advanced Comparison: gittikçe, -DIkçA, oranla

At A2 you compared things with daha ("more") and en ("most"): daha büyük "bigger," en büyük "biggest." Those carry you a long way, but analytical and academic Turkish reaches for a richer toolkit of gradation — ways to say something is increasingly the case, proportionally greater, or great relative to a baseline. This page covers four advanced devices: gittikçe / giderek ("increasingly"), the -DIkçA proportional ("the more… the more…"), the dative-governed comparison postpositions -(y)A oranla / göre / kıyasla ("compared to"), and the en … biri frame ("one of the most…"). Master these and your comparisons stop being binary and start having texture. (For basic daha, start at the comparative with daha.)

gittikçe / giderek: "increasingly, more and more"

To say something is changing steadily in one direction — getting worse, rising, growing — Turkish has two near-synonymous adverbs: gittikçe (literally "as it goes," from git- "go" + the -DIkçA suffix) and giderek ("by going," from git- + -ArAk). Both mean "increasingly / more and more / progressively" and modify a verb or an adjective. They are the natural way to render English "is getting more and more X."

A common intensified pattern is gittikçe daha + adjective: gittikçe daha karmaşık ("more and more complex"), stacking the "increasingly" adverb on top of the comparative. In formal registers giderek is slightly preferred in writing; gittikçe is at home in both speech and prose. Note the spelling: gittikçe is git- + the suffix -DIkçA, and the double t is no accident — the stem git already ends in t, and the suffix's D devoices to t after it, so the two ts meet (git + tikçe → gittikçe). The high vowel harmonizes to i (front, unrounded) after git, giving -tikçe.

The -DIkçA proportional: "the more… the more…"

This is the structure English speakers most often lack a reflex for. The converb -DIkçA attached to a verb means "as / the more (one) does X", and when paired with a main clause it builds the proportional correlative: the more X, the more Y. The same suffix that gives gittikçe its "as it goes" sense generalizes to any verb.

The pattern is [verb]-DIkçA … [main clause, often with daha]. To sharpen the correlation, the main clause typically carries daha ("more") — yaşlandıkça daha az ("the older… the less"). For the static "the more… the more…" with adjectives, Turkish often uses the doubled correlative -dıkça on the same verb or the ne kadar… o kadar frame:

The -DIkçA vowel is a four-way harmony -dıkça / -dikçe / -dukça / -dükçe, with the usual t-initial -tıkça / -tikçe / -tukça / -tükçe after voiceless stems: bak- → baktıkça ("the more one looks"), gör- → gördükçe ("the more one sees"). The cedilla on ç is non-negotiable — dıkca is a misspelling. (The converb itself is detailed at the -DIkçA converb; the broader correlative system is at comparison and correlation.)

Compared to a baseline: -(y)A oranla / göre / kıyasla

Formal comparison rarely says bluntly "X is bigger than Y." It frames X relative to a reference point: compared to last year, relative to the average, in comparison with its rivals. Turkish does this with postpositions that govern the dative -(y)A — the reference point takes the dative, then comes the postposition. Three are central:

The crucial structural point — and the place English speakers stumble — is that the standard of comparison is dative, not the ablative -DAn you use with plain daha (benden daha uzun "taller than me"). Here the reference point gets -A: geçen yıla oranla ("compared to last year"), ortalamaya göre ("relative to the average").

Note that -(y)A göre is the everyday, register-neutral member — you will hear bana göre ("in my opinion / for me") constantly — while oranla, kıyasla, and nazaran climb the formality ladder into reports, editorials, and academic prose. (All four sit alongside the other dative-governed postpositions at dative postpositions.)

en … biri: "one of the most…"

The superlative en marks the single top of a scale — en büyük "the biggest." But to say something is one of the most X — not necessarily the single most — Turkish wraps en + adjective + plural noun inside biri ("one of"): en … -lAr-dAn biri, literally "one from among the most …". The reference set goes in the ablative -DAn ("from among"), and biri ("one of them") heads the phrase.

The skeleton is en [adj] [noun]-lAr-(possessive)-DAn biri: en kalabalık şehir-ler-in-den bir-i = "one of its most crowded cities." Two things to get right: the noun must be plural (you're picking from a set), and it takes the ablative -DAn ("from among"). The head biri itself can inflect — birinde ("in one of…"), birini ("one of … [as object]").

Putting the gradation tools together

Analytical writing rarely uses these in isolation; it layers them. Here a trend (giderek) meets a baseline comparison (göre) in a single argument:

That second sentence runs a -DIkçA proportional into an en … biri superlative — exactly the kind of compound gradation that separates intermediate from advanced Turkish.

Common mistakes

The signature error is using the ablative standard of daha with the dative postpositions — or reaching only for daha / en when nuance calls for these.

The deeper habit to break is treating comparison as binary — daha for "more," en for "most," and nothing else. Advanced Turkish grades along a continuum: gittikçe for a moving trend, -DIkçA for a proportional link, -A oranla/göre for a measured baseline, en … biri for "among the top." Each is a precision instrument; reaching only for daha is like writing English with no comparatives beyond "more."

Key takeaways

• gittikçe / giderek = "increasingly, more and more"; intensify with daha: gittikçe daha karmaşık.
• -DIkçA builds the proportional "the more… the more…"; the main clause usually carries daha or the ne kadar… o kadar frame. Spell with the cedilla: -dıkça / -dikçe / -dukça / -dükçe (voiceless: -tıkça…).
• "Compared to" uses dative-governed postpositions: -(y)A oranla / göre / kıyasla / nazaran. The standard is dative here, not the ablative used with plain daha.
• göre is register-neutral; oranla, kıyasla, nazaran climb into formal/academic prose.
• "One of the most…" is en [adj] [noun]-lAr-…-DAn biri: the noun is plural and takes the ablative "from among"; biri heads the phrase and can itself inflect.