Once you have the high-frequency postpositions down, a second tier separates intermediate speakers from advanced ones. Beri, boyunca, dolayı, and üzere are not rare — you meet them daily in the news and in careful speech — but each governs a specific case, and one of them, üzere, maps to several unrelated English meanings depending on its complement. Learning these correctly is largely a matter of memorizing which case each demands, because choosing the wrong one is the error that instantly marks a sentence as foreign.
-DAn beri: "since" a starting point
Beri means "since" and governs the ablative case (-DAn). The ablative makes intuitive sense: you are measuring duration out from a starting point, and the ablative is the "from" case. Beri answers "since when?", giving the moment a still-ongoing situation began.
Sabahtan beri ayaktayım, oturacak fırsat bulamadım.
I've been on my feet since morning, I haven't had a chance to sit down.
Taşındığımız günden beri komşularla hiç tanışmadık.
We haven't met the neighbours at all since the day we moved in.
Crucially, beri expresses since a point in time, not a span of time. For "for three hours" (a duration with no start point), Turkish uses the bare time noun, not beri: üç saattir or üç saat — beri would be wrong there. Use beri only when there is an identifiable starting moment.
Geçen yıldan beri bu projede çalışıyorum.
I've been working on this project since last year.
boyunca: "throughout / along"
Boyunca governs a bare (unmarked, nominative-form) noun and spans two senses that English splits: a temporal "throughout / all… long" and a spatial "along / the length of." This double life comes from its root boy ("length, extent"): something happens over the full length of a time period or runs along the full length of a physical line.
Temporal:
Gün boyunca telefonum hiç susmadı, çok yoğun bir gündü.
My phone didn't stop ringing all day long, it was a very busy day.
Yaz boyunca her hafta sahile gittik.
Throughout the summer we went to the beach every week.
Spatial:
Yol boyunca kiraz ağaçları dikilmiş, manzara harikaydı.
Cherry trees have been planted along the road, the view was wonderful.
Nehir boyunca yürüyerek köye kadar gittik.
We walked along the river all the way to the village.
Note that boyunca takes its complement bare: gün boyunca, yol boyunca — no case ending on gün or yol. This is unusual for a postposition that feels so directional, and it is worth marking, because English speakers reach for an ablative or dative that does not belong here.
-DAn dolayı / -DAn ötürü: "owing to"
Dolayı and its near-twin ötürü both mean "because of / owing to / due to" and both govern the ablative (-DAn). They state a cause, and like English "owing to / due to" they belong to a slightly more careful or formal register than the all-purpose conjunction çünkü ("because"). Dolayı is the more common of the two; ötürü is a touch more literary but fully current.
Yoğun kardan dolayı okullar bugün tatil edildi.
Owing to the heavy snow, schools were closed today.
Sağlık sorunlarından dolayı görevinden istifa etti.
He resigned from his post owing to health problems.
Bir yanlış anlaşılmadan ötürü toplantı ertelendi.
The meeting was postponed because of a misunderstanding.
Because they take the ablative, the cause noun must carry -DAn: kar → kardan, sorunlar → sorunlardan. The structure is "from the snow, owing" — the ablative again marking the source, this time the source of a result rather than a movement.
üzere: one form, several meanings
Üzere is the trickiest postposition in this set because it is genuinely multifunctional. Its meaning is read off its complement, and there is no single English equivalent. Three uses dominate:
1. "About to / on the verge of" — with a bare infinitive (-mAk), üzere marks an action just on the point of happening. This is its prospective-aspect use.
Tam çıkmak üzereydim ki telefon çaldı.
I was just about to leave when the phone rang.
Tren kalkmak üzere, koşmamız lazım!
The train is about to depart, we have to run!
2. "So as to / in order to / with the intention that" — again with a bare infinitive (-mAk), but here üzere introduces a purpose or arrangement rather than imminence, close to "on the understanding that." The complement is identical in form to use 1; what distinguishes the two readings is the surrounding clause (an intention being set up, not an event on the brink).
Akşam geri vermek üzere arabayı ödünç aldım.
I borrowed the car so as to return it in the evening.
3. "On condition that / as agreed" — üzere states the terms of an arrangement.
Faizsiz olmak üzere borç para verdi.
He lent the money on the condition that it be interest-free.
A fourth, bookish use means "as / in accordance with": bilindiği üzere ("as is known"), yukarıda belirtildiği üzere ("as stated above") — these are set phrases of formal and academic writing.
Bilindiği üzere, başvuru süresi yarın sona eriyor.
As is known, the application deadline ends tomorrow.
Common mistakes
❌ Sabah beri ayaktayım.
Complement of beri left without the ablative.
✅ Sabahtan beri ayaktayım.
I've been on my feet since morning.
Beri governs the ablative: sabah → sabahtan. Dropping -DAn is the classic error.
❌ Kar dolayı okullar tatil edildi.
dolayı used without the ablative on its complement.
✅ Kardan dolayı okullar tatil edildi.
Owing to the snow, schools were closed.
Like beri, dolayı and ötürü demand the ablative -DAn on the cause noun.
❌ Yolun boyunca ağaçlar var.
A case ending added to a boyunca complement that should stay bare.
✅ Yol boyunca ağaçlar var.
There are trees along the road.
Boyunca takes a bare complement — yol boyunca, not yolun boyunca and not yoldan boyunca.
❌ Çıkıyorum üzereydim.
üzere combined with a finite verb instead of the bare infinitive for 'about to.'
✅ Çıkmak üzereydim.
I was about to leave.
For "about to," üzere needs the bare infinitive -mAk: çıkmak üzere, never a tensed verb form.
Key takeaways
- beri = "since (a starting point)," governs the ablative: sabahtan beri. Use it only when there is an identifiable start moment, not for plain durations.
- boyunca = "throughout" (time) and "along" (space); its complement stays bare: gün boyunca, yol boyunca.
- dolayı / ötürü = "owing to," both govern the ablative: kardan dolayı. Slightly formal register.
- üzere is multifunctional — "about to" with a bare infinitive, "so as to / on condition that" with a purpose, and "as" in frozen phrases like bilindiği üzere.
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- Ablative Postpositions: önce, sonra, beri, dolayıB1 — önce, sonra, beri and dolayı take the ablative -DAn (dersten sonra, sabahtan beri) — but önce/sonra switch to a bare time noun for durations (üç gün önce 'three days ago').
- Before and After: önce / sonra in TimeA2 — önce 'before/ago' and sonra 'after/later' take a bare time noun for durations (iki saat sonra), the ablative for reference points (yemekten sonra), and -mAdAn önce / -DIktAn sonra for whole clauses.
- The Ablative -DAn: From / Out Of / ThanA1 — The ablative case -DAn marks source and origin (from, out of, off), material and cause, the partitive (some of), and — uniquely for English speakers — the standard of comparison (than).
- Cause and Result ConnectivesB1 — Choosing the right cause/result link in Turkish — preposed -DIğI için 'because', postposed çünkü 'because', and the result connectives bu yüzden / bu nedenle / dolayısıyla 'therefore' — and how each one sets the register.