Turkish builds every "if" sentence out of a single morpheme, -sA (written -sa / -se by vowel harmony), yet it can distinguish a remote daydream from a near-certain prediction. English needs three separate verb shapes for this — if I come, if I came, if I had come — and an auxiliary would in the result. Turkish needs one suffix and a single decision: where do I attach -sA? That placement, not a separate set of tenses, is the engine of the whole system. This page gives you the bird's-eye map; the dedicated pages drill into each type.
The one rule that organizes everything
The reality of the condition is encoded by where -sA sits relative to the tense markers.
- Attach -sA to the bare verb stem → a hypothetical or wished-for condition. The action is pulled out of real time and floated as a mere possibility: gelsem "if I were to come / were I to come."
- Attach -(y)sA to a fully tensed verb (aorist, present, past, future) → a real, open condition about the actual world: gelirse "if he comes," geliyorsa "if he is coming," geldiyse "if he came," gelecekse "if he is going to come."
- Add -(y)DI after the conditional (-sAydI) → a counterfactual: a condition known to be false: gelseydi "if he had come (but he didn't)."
So the same verb gel- "come" gives you a remote hypothetical, an open real condition, and a contrary-to-fact past — purely by morphological position. Hold onto that single picture and the rest is bookkeeping.
Yarın yağmur yağarsa pikniği iptal ederiz.
If it rains tomorrow, we'll cancel the picnic.
Bir milyonum olsa dünyayı gezerdim.
If I had a million, I'd travel the world.
O gün telefonu açsaydın her şey farklı olurdu.
If you'd picked up the phone that day, everything would have been different.
Type 1 — Hypothetical / wish: bare stem + -sA
When -sA goes straight onto the stem, the verb has no tense of its own. It is suspended, presented as a pure supposition. This is the form you use for daydreams, polite suggestions, and (with keşke "if only") wishes.
The bare-stem conditional rarely stands alone as a real "if X, then Y." Its natural partners are the aorist of habit/prediction in the result (the so-called second conditional, if I had…, I would…), or it appears as a standalone wish.
Keşke biraz daha dikkatli olsam.
If only I were a bit more careful.
Şimdi bir kahve içsek çok iyi olur.
It'd be really nice if we had a coffee right now.
Yerinde olsam o işi kabul etmezdim.
If I were in your shoes, I wouldn't take that job.
Notice olsam (bare stem ol- + -sa + -m): no tense marker comes between the stem and -sA. That bareness is the signal that we have stepped out of the real world. Full conjugation of this form lives on the verbal conditional -sA page.
Type 2 — Real / open condition: tense + -(y)sA
For things that may genuinely happen, you take a finished, tensed verb and clip -(y)sA onto the end of it. Because a tense suffix is already there, the conditional now needs the buffer consonant -y- whenever the tense ends in a vowel, and it harmonizes: -yse / -ysa.
| Tense in the protasis | Verb (3sg) |
| Meaning |
|---|---|---|---|
| Aorist (predictive) | gelir | gelirse | if he comes |
| Present continuous | geliyor | geliyorsa | if he is coming |
| Past (-DI) | geldi | geldiyse | if he came / has come |
| Future | gelecek | gelecekse | if he's going to come |
The choice of tense inside the if-clause is not free — it tracks the real aspect of the event, exactly as the indicative would. The result clause then typically uses the aorist or the future for a predictable outcome.
İşin bittiyse bana haber ver.
If your work is finished, let me know.
Otobüs henüz gelmiyorsa biraz daha bekleriz.
If the bus still isn't coming, we'll wait a bit longer.
Bu fiyata satacaksanız hemen alırım.
If you're going to sell at this price, I'll buy it right away.
The crucial contrast: gelse ("were he to come" — remote) vs gelirse ("if he comes" — a live possibility). Full treatment on the real conditions page.
Type 3 — Counterfactual: -sAydI
To say a condition is false — it didn't happen, and you're imagining the alternative — you stack the copular past -(y)DI onto the conditional: -sA + -(y)DI = -sAydI. The result clause then takes the past aorist -Irdi (or future-in-the-past -AcAktI), which is Turkish's dedicated "would have" machinery.
Param olsaydı o evi alırdım.
If I'd had the money, I would have bought that house.
Bunu önceden bilseydim hiç gelmezdim.
Had I known this beforehand, I'd never have come.
Keşke o soruyu hiç sormasaydım.
I wish I'd never asked that question.
The two halves lock together: -sAydI in the if-clause, -Irdi / -AcAktI in the then-clause. This frame is covered in depth on the counterfactual conditions page.
Type 4 — Conditional of "to be": -(y)sA on a noun or adjective
Turkish has no verb "to be" in the present, so conditions about states attach -(y)sA straight to the predicate noun or adjective: zenginse "if he is rich," evdeyse "if she's at home," doğruysa "if it's true." This is the copular conditional, and it behaves like a Type 2 real condition because it sits on a (zero) present tense.
Hava güzelse sahile gideriz.
If the weather's nice, we'll go to the beach.
O kadar önemliyse neden söylemedin?
If it was so important, why didn't you say?
Full paradigm — ise written separately and -(y)sA as a suffix — on the copular conditional ise page.
Orthography you must get right
- -sA has only two written forms by two-way (a/e) vowel harmony: -sa after a back vowel (alsa, yazsa, koşsa), -se after a front vowel (gelse, görse, bilse). It never becomes -sı or -su.
- -(y)sA inserts a buffer -y- only when the preceding tense ends in a vowel: geliyor*sa (consonant, no y) but iyi*yse (vowel, y appears). After -DI you get geldi*yse.
- The personal endings ride on top: -m, -n, -k, -nIz, -lAr — gelse*m, gelsen, gelsek*.
- eğer "if" is optional and only reinforces the suffix; the -sA does the real work. Eğer gelirse and gelirse mean the same thing. Never use eğer as a substitute for the suffix — it cannot stand alone.
Common mistakes
❌ Gelse, beni ara.
Incorrect — bare -sA used for a real, expected condition.
✅ Gelirse, beni ara.
If he comes, call me.
Bare gelse floats the action out of reality ("were he to come"); for a genuine open condition you need the tense + -(y)sA: gelirse.
❌ Eğer yağmur yağar, ıslanırız.
Incorrect — eğer alone, no -sA on the verb.
✅ Eğer yağmur yağarsa, ıslanırız.
If it rains, we'll get wet.
eğer never carries the condition by itself; the suffix is obligatory.
❌ Param olsa o evi alırdım.
Incorrect for a real past chance you missed — open hypothetical used where a counterfactual is meant.
✅ Param olsaydı o evi alırdım.
If I'd had the money, I would have bought that house.
For a missed past possibility you need -sAydI, not bare -sA.
❌ Geldiyse görürüm onu yarın.
Mismatched — real past condition with a future-style result.
✅ Geldiyse haber ver.
If he has come, let me know.
Key takeaways
- One morpheme, -sA, runs the entire conditional system; its position sets the meaning.
- Bare stem + -sA (gelse) = hypothetical/wish; tense + -(y)sA (gelirse, geliyorsa, geldiyse) = real/open; -sAydI (gelseydi) = counterfactual.
- Real conditions take a real tense inside the if-clause; the result is usually aorist or future.
- Counterfactuals lock -sAydI to the past-aorist result -Irdi / -AcAktI.
- eğer is decorative; the suffix is mandatory. Harmony gives only -sa/-se, with buffer -y- after a vowel.
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- The Conditional -sA ('if')A2 — The verbal conditional -sA attaches to a bare verb stem for hypothetical and wish conditions — gelsem 'if I come', Keşke gelse 'if only he'd come' — and contrasts with the real/factual conditional -(y)sA, which attaches to a full tense (gelirse 'if he comes').
- Real Conditions: -(y)sA on TensesB2 — Factual, open conditions formed by clipping -(y)sA onto a finished tense — gelirse, geliyorsa, geldiyse, gelecekse — with the result clause in the aorist or future.
- Counterfactual and Past Conditions: -sAydIB2 — The unreal-past frame -sAydI … -Irdi — saying 'if X had happened, Y would have happened' about a world that did not come true, plus keşke wishes.
- Conditional Copula: -(y)sA / iseB1 — The copular conditional -(y)sA / ise means 'if (it) is' for states (zenginse 'if he is rich'), and as the separate word ise also works as a contrastive topic marker 'as for' (Ayşe ise gelmez 'as for Ayşe, she won't come').