var/yok in the Past and Future | Turkish Grammar

You already know that var and yok say "there is" and "there isn't" in the present, and that they carry possession ("I have / I don't have") because Turkish has no verb "to have." But how do you say there was a problem, I had a car, there will be a meeting? Since var and yok are not verbs, you cannot just hang a tense ending on them the way you would on a verb stem. Instead Turkish recruits the copula for the past and evidential, and the verb olmak "to be / to become / to happen" for the future. This page shows the whole tense map.

Why var/yok need help

A verb like gel- "come" inflects directly: geldi "came," gelecek "will come." var and yok can't do this, because they aren't verb stems — they're predicates that already mean "exists / doesn't exist" on their own. To shift them in time, Turkish attaches the small i-copula (the verb imek "to be," now reduced to suffixes like -DI and -mIş) or replaces them outright with olmak. So the past of "there is" isn't a new form of var; it's var plus "was."

Past: vardı and yoktu

Add the copular past -DI to get the past existential and the past possessive. The result is written as one word:

var + -dı → vardı "there was / I had"
yok + -tu → yoktu "there wasn't / I didn't have"

Watch the consonant on yoktu: because yok ends in the voiceless k, the D of the copula hardens to t, giving -tu (vowel by harmony, rounded after the o). var ends in a voiced r, so it keeps d: vardı.

Eskiden burada güzel bir çay bahçesi vardı.

There used to be a lovely tea garden here.

O zamanlar param yoktu, her şeye dikkat ederdim.

Back then I had no money, I was careful about everything.

Çocukken bir kedimiz vardı, adı Tekir'di.

When I was a kid we had a cat, its name was Tekir.

The possessive logic is identical to the present — the owned thing keeps its possessive suffix, and vardı / yoktu supply both "exist" and "past":

Present	Past	Meaning (past)
param var	param vardı	I had money
param yok	param yoktu	I had no money
vaktin var	vaktin vardı	you had time
arabası var	arabası vardı	he/she had a car
kimse yok	kimse yoktu	there was nobody

Benim de bir zamanlar böyle hayallerim vardı.

I too had dreams like this once.

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Reach for vardı / yoktu whenever you'd say "there was / there wasn't" or "I had / I didn't have." The full conjugated set adds personal endings to the predicate noun, not to vardı itself — the person still lives in the possessive suffix (param vardı, paran vardı, parası vardı).

Evidential: varmış and yokmuş

To report existence you didn't witness directly — hearsay, inference, sudden realization — use the evidential -mIş:

var + -mış → varmış "there is/was (apparently / it seems)"
yok + -muş → yokmuş "there isn't/wasn't (apparently)"

This is the form you reach for after meğer "as it turns out / little did I know," which forces the evidential because it marks a belief you've just revised.

Meğer adamın hiç parası yokmuş, hepsi gösterişmiş.

As it turns out, the man had no money at all — it was all for show.

Tepedeki köyde küçük bir lokanta varmış, oradan yiyelim.

Apparently there's a little restaurant in the village up the hill; let's eat there.

Toplantıya gelmemiş, çünkü haberi bile yokmuş.

He didn't come to the meeting because, apparently, he didn't even know about it.

Every Turkish fairy tale opens with this form: Bir varmış, bir yokmuş — literally "once there was, once there wasn't," the equivalent of "once upon a time." That set phrase is a perfect snapshot of varmış/yokmuş doing storytelling, evidential work.

Future: use olmak, not var/yok

Here is the rule English speakers most often break. var and yok have no future, conditional, or necessitative form of their own. For "there will be / there won't be," you switch to the verb olmak "to be, to come about, to happen," and conjugate it normally:

olacak "there will be"
olmayacak "there won't be"

Yarın saat onda bir toplantı olacak, unutma.

There'll be a meeting at ten tomorrow, don't forget.

Bu gidişle gelecek ay hiç paramız olmayacak.

At this rate we won't have any money next month.

Merak etme, bir çözüm olacak.

Don't worry, there'll be a solution.

Notice that olmak also supplies the future of possession: "I will have money" is param olacak ("my money will come to be"), and "we won't have money" is paramız olmayacak. The possessive suffix stays; olacak/olmayacak replaces var/yok.

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Think of olmak as the verb that var/yok "borrow" whenever they need a tense they don't have. Future, conditional (olursa "if there is"), necessitative (olmalı "there must be") — all come from olmak. var/yok only stand alone in the present, past (vardı/yoktu) and evidential (varmış/yokmuş).

You may also see var olmak / yok olmak as full verbs — but these have shifted meaning to "to exist / to come into being" and "to vanish, be destroyed," which is heavier than plain "there will be." For an everyday "there will be a meeting," plain olacak is what natives say; reserve var olmak for elevated or existential contexts (Var ol! "Bless you / long may you exist!").

The full tense map

Tense	"there is"	"there isn't"	Built from
Present	var	yok	bare word
Past	vardı	yoktu	copular -DI
Evidential	varmış	yokmuş	copular -mIş
Future	olacak	olmayacak	verb olmak
Conditional	olursa / varsa*	olmazsa / yoksa*	olmak (var/yok + -sA for "if there is")

The conditional has a quirk worth flagging: *varsa "if there is" and yoksa "if there isn't / or else" do exist, formed by adding the conditional -sA straight onto var/yok. So paran varsa "if you have money" is perfectly standard. But for a future-looking "if there comes to be," olmak's olursa is used. This split confuses learners — see olmak for the details.

Common mistakes

❌ Yarın toplantı varacak.

Incorrect — putting a future ending directly on var.

✅ Yarın toplantı olacak.

There'll be a meeting tomorrow.

var cannot take -AcAk; varacak is not a word. The future comes from olmak: olacak.

❌ Eskiden param yokdu.

Incorrect — keeping d after the voiceless k.

✅ Eskiden param yoktu.

I used to have no money.

After the voiceless k of yok, the copular -DI hardens to -tu: yoktu, never yokdu.

❌ Param olmayacak değil.

Incorrect — double-negating the future.

✅ Param olmayacak.

I won't have any money.

The negative is already inside olmayacak (olma- + future). Don't add değil on top.

❌ Meğer parası yoktu.

Weak — using the plain past for a just-discovered fact.

✅ Meğer parası yokmuş.

As it turns out, he had no money.

After meğer (a revised belief), Turkish wants the evidential: yokmuş, not the witnessed past yoktu.

Key takeaways

var/yok are not verbs, so their other tenses are built with the copula or with olmak.
Past: vardı "there was / I had," yoktu "there wasn't / I didn't have" (D→t after the k of yok).
Evidential: varmış / yokmuş "(apparently) there is/isn't" — obligatory after meğer and in storytelling.
Future: use olmak — olacak "there will be," olmayacak "there won't be." Never varacak.
Possession follows the same machinery: param vardı "I had money," param olacak "I'll have money."

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