When English wants to state a rule, a recipe step, or a fact about how the world works, it reaches for "you": you boil the water, you don't park here, you add the onion. This generic "you" doesn't really mean you — it means anyone, one, people in general. Turkish almost never uses sen or siz this way. Instead it has two purpose-built tools: the aorist for general truths and habits, and the impersonal passive for rules and procedures. Learning to reach for kaynar and edilmez instead of "you boil / you may not" is one of the clearest markers of B2-level naturalness.
General truths: the aorist (-Ir)
The aorist, formed with -Ir / -Ar (and the negative -mAz), is Turkish's tense for timeless facts: things that are always true, laws of nature, habitual behaviour. It has no English equivalent slot — English just uses the simple present — so learners reach for the present continuous -iyor instead, which is wrong for a general truth. Water doesn't happen to be boiling; it boils, as a rule, at 100 degrees.
Su 100 derecede kaynar.
Water boils at 100 degrees.
Kediler karanlıkta iyi görür.
Cats see well in the dark.
Demir ıslanınca paslanır.
Iron rusts when it gets wet.
The negative is -mAz, and it states a general non-truth just as flatly: a fact about what does not happen.
Bu kapı dışarıdan açılmaz.
This door doesn't open from the outside.
The aorist is also how proverbs, slogans, and pieces of folk wisdom are worded — which is exactly why they sound timeless. For the full conjugation and the maddening irregularity of which verbs take -Ir versus -Ar, see the aorist.
Rules and prohibitions: the impersonal passive
For a rule — what is permitted, forbidden, or done in a given place — Turkish uses the impersonal passive: the verb in passive form, aorist tense, with no subject at all. The passive suffix is -Il / -In, reducing to bare -n after a vowel: aç-ıl-, gir-il-, park et- → park edil-, sigara iç-il-. There is no "you," no "one," no "people" — the action simply is done or is not done. This is the standard wording of public signs, regulations, and announcements.
Burada park edilmez.
No parking here. (literally: here it-is-not-parked)
İçeri girilmez.
No entry. (literally: it-is-not-entered inside)
Burada sigara içilmez.
No smoking here.
Notice there is nobody in these sentences. Park edilmez doesn't say you may not park, or one may not park — it presents the prohibition as a fact about the place itself. This impersonality is precisely what makes it feel official and impartial; a sign that said Sen burada park etme ("don't you park here") would sound like a personal scolding, not a rule. The positive counterpart works the same way for what is done somewhere.
Bu formda büyük harfle yazılır.
On this form, you write in capitals. (literally: it-is-written in capitals)
For the mechanics of building these forms — how -Il, -In, and -n are chosen, and how the agent disappears — see the impersonal passive.
Instructions and recipes: the same impersonal passive
Here is the fact that surprises every English speaker. A Turkish recipe does not say "chop the onion, add the water, cook for ten minutes" with commands to you. It states each step in the impersonal passive aorist, exactly like a rule: the onion is chopped, the water is added, it is cooked. The procedure is described as a sequence of things that happen, in a fixed, depersonalised, almost ritual register.
Önce soğan ince ince doğranır.
First, the onion is finely chopped. (recipe register)
Tencereye iki bardak su eklenir ve on dakika kaynatılır.
Two cups of water are added to the pot and it is boiled for ten minutes.
En son tuz atılır ve ocak kapatılır.
Finally, salt is added and the stove is turned off.
Read aloud, soğan doğranır literally means "the onion is chopped" — and yet in context it functions as an instruction: chop the onion. This is the default register for written recipes, assembly instructions, and any depersonalised how-to text. The imperative doğrayın ("chop!") exists and is heard in spoken cooking shows and chattier blog recipes, but the classic printed recipe uses the passive. For the full recipe register, including connectives like daha sonra and iyice, see instructions and recipes.
Prescriptions: -mAlI and gerek
When the point is not "this is how it's done" but "this is what should be done" — advice, obligation, a strong recommendation — Turkish switches to the necessitative -mAlI ("must / should") or the construction with gerek / lazım ("it's necessary"). These do carry a notion of obligation that the bare passive lacks, so they're used for safety warnings, health advice, and rules of conduct rather than neutral procedure.
Kullanmadan önce şişe iyice çalkalanmalı.
Before use, the bottle should be shaken well.
Bu ilacı aç karnına almamak gerekir.
You shouldn't take this medicine on an empty stomach. (literally: it is necessary not to take...)
Even here, notice the impersonality: çalkalanmalı is again a passive ("should be shaken"), and almamak gerekir uses the bare infinitive with gerekir, with no "you" in sight. The obligation floats free of any particular person. For the necessitative system and its registers, see the necessitative -mAlI.
Why no "you"?
The deep logic is this: a generic statement is about the action or the world, not about the listener. English uses "you" as a stand-in for "anyone," but Turkish keeps the generic genuinely subjectless. The aorist makes the action a timeless fact; the impersonal passive makes it a thing that simply gets done. Dragging sen or siz into the sentence re-personalises it — it stops being a rule and becomes a remark aimed at one specific person. That is why generic sen is the single most common register error English speakers make at this level: it's grammatical, but it points the sentence at the wrong target.
Türkiye'de trafik sağdan akar.
In Turkey, traffic flows on the right.
Common mistakes
❌ Önce sen soğanı doğrarsın.
Generic 'you' in a recipe — grammatical but wrong register; it sounds like you're bossing one specific person around. A recipe uses the impersonal passive.
✅ Önce soğan doğranır.
First, the onion is chopped.
Don't translate the recipe "you" with sen. Use the passive aorist: doğranır, eklenir, kaynatılır.
❌ Burada park etmezsin.
Aorist with a 'you' ending — this means 'you don't park here' as a remark about that one person, not a public rule.
✅ Burada park edilmez.
No parking here.
For a public prohibition, use the impersonal passive (edilmez), not a second-person verb.
❌ Su 100 derecede kaynıyor.
Present continuous for a general truth — this says the water is boiling right now, not that water boils as a rule.
✅ Su 100 derecede kaynar.
Water boils at 100 degrees.
General truths take the aorist (kaynar), not the continuous -iyor.
❌ İçeri girmiyorsun.
Negative continuous for a prohibition — this describes one person not going in, not the rule 'no entry.'
✅ İçeri girilmez.
No entry.
A sign or rule uses the impersonal passive -Il-mez, not a personal -miyorsun.
❌ Bu ilacı aç karnına almazsın.
Aorist 'you' for advice — reads as a flat statement about one person rather than a general prescription.
✅ Bu ilacı aç karnına almamak gerekir.
You shouldn't take this medicine on an empty stomach.
For a prescription or piece of advice, use gerek(ir) or -mAlI, keeping the subject impersonal.
Key takeaways
- General truths and habits → aorist (-Ir / -mAz): Su kaynar, kediler iyi görür. Not the continuous -iyor.
- Rules and prohibitions → impersonal passive aorist (-Il-Ir / -Il-mez): Burada park edilmez, içeri girilmez. No "you."
- Recipes and how-to procedures → the same impersonal passive: soğan doğranır = "chop the onion," literally "the onion is chopped."
- Prescriptions and advice → -mAlI or gerek / lazım, still impersonal: çalkalanmalı, almamak gerekir.
- The unifying rule: a generic statement keeps no "you" in it. English's generic "you" is a transfer trap — re-personalising a rule is the classic B2 error.
Now practice Turkish
Reading grammar gets you part of the way. The exercises are where it sticks — free, no signup needed.
Start learning Turkish→Related Topics
- Impersonal and Generic StatementsB2 — How Turkish says 'one', 'you', or 'people in general' — chiefly through the impersonal passive of intransitive verbs.
- The Aorist -(A/I)r: Habitual and GeneralA2 — How to form the Turkish aorist and why it covers habits, general truths, and polite offers rather than the present moment.
- The Necessitative -mAlI ('must/should')A2 — A single suffix, -mAlI, covers English 'must', 'should', and 'ought to' — gitmeliyim 'I must/should go', çalışmalısın 'you should study' — and also the inferential 'must be' of deduction (Yorgun olmalısın 'You must be tired'), with the past -mAlIydI giving 'should have'.
- Instructions, Recipes, ManualsB2 — How Turkish writes procedures — the impersonal-passive aorist of recipes and manuals versus the casual imperative of a friend reading you a recipe.