bakmak (to look at / look after) | Turkish Grammar

bakmak is the verb every Turkish learner should study right after görmek, because the two look like a pair in English ("see" and "look") but behave completely differently in Turkish grammar. görmek takes an accusative object; bakmak takes a dative one. It is the single best illustration of lexical case government — the principle that each verb fixes the case of its object, and that the English preposition will not predict it. On top of that, bakmak carries two distinct meanings — "to look at" and "to look after / take care of" — that English keeps apart with different verbs but Turkish bundles into one.

The stem and the forms

Drop -mak and you get the stem bak-. It is regular, with one spelling point: the stem ends in the voiceless k, so the past-tense suffix surfaces as -tı (baktım), not -dı. The aorist is the regular -Ar set: bakar.

Tense / form	"I" form	"he/she/it" form
Present continuous -(I)yor	bakıyorum	bakıyor
Aorist -(A/I)r	bakarım	bakar
Past -DI	baktım	baktı
Future -(y)AcAK	bakacağım	bakacak
Evidential -mIş	bakmışım	bakmış

Bütün gece telefonuna baktı durdu, bir mesaj bekliyordu sanırım.

He kept looking at his phone all night — I think he was waiting for a message.

Sana bütün gün baktım ama beni hiç fark etmedin.

I looked at you all day, but you never noticed me.

bakmak governs the dative

This is the heart of the page. The object of bakmak takes the dative -(y)A (-a/-e), the case of direction and goal. The logic is real: Turkish conceptualises looking as directing your gaze toward something, so the target of your gaze is a goal — dative, the same case as in "go to school." English "look at" gives you the wrong instinct, because "at" feels like a fixed point (locative) rather than a direction.

Bana bak, bunu bir daha asla yapma.

Look at me — never do this again.

Tabloya dikkatle bakınca asıl konuyu anlıyorsun.

When you look carefully at the painting, you understand what it's really about.

Aynaya baktım ve kendimi tanıyamadım.

I looked in the mirror and couldn't recognise myself.

Compare the pair directly. With görmek, "I saw you" is seni gördüm — accusative seni. With bakmak, "I looked at you" is sana baktım — dative sana. Same pronoun, two different cases, decided entirely by the verb. This is what "the verb governs the case" means in practice.

💡

Store bakmak in your memory as bakmak-a — the verb plus its case, fused into one unit, exactly as you'd memorise a German verb with its case. When you reach for it, the dative should come automatically: not "look + at" but "bak + -a."

The second meaning: to look after, to take care of

The same verb bakmak, still with a dative object, also means "to look after, take care of, tend, mind." This is not a separate verb — context tells you which reading is intended, and the dative object is the same. çocuğa bakmak can mean "look at the child" or "look after the child" depending on situation, though "look after" is overwhelmingly the everyday reading for people, animals, and plants.

Biz tatildeyken komşumuz kedimize baktı.

While we were on holiday, our neighbour looked after our cat.

Yaşlı annesine tek başına bakıyor, çok yoruluyor.

She looks after her elderly mother on her own — she gets very tired.

Bu çiçeklere düzenli bakmazsan birkaç günde solar.

If you don't tend these flowers regularly, they'll wilt within a few days.

This caregiving sense also extends to professional contexts: hastaya bakmak ("to attend to / treat a patient"), bir işe bakmak ("to deal with / handle a matter," literally "to look to a job"). In all of them the object stays dative.

Doktor şu an başka bir hastaya bakıyor, biraz bekleyin lütfen.

The doctor is currently attending to another patient — please wait a moment.

Negative and question forms

The negative inserts -mA-: bakmıyorum (present continuous, with the vowel swallowed before -yor), bakmadım (past), bakmayacağım (future). The aorist negative is the irregular pattern: bakmam ("I don't look"), bakmaz ("he/she doesn't look"). The question particle stays a separate word and harmonises: baktın mı?, bakar mısın?.

Form	Negative	Question
Present continuous	bakmıyorum	bakıyor muyum?
Aorist	bakmam / bakmaz	bakar mıyım?
Past	bakmadım	baktım mı?
Future	bakmayacağım	bakacak mıyım?

Worth knowing: bakar mısın? ("would you look?") is the standard polite way to get a waiter's or a stranger's attention — the Turkish equivalent of "excuse me." It is aorist, not present continuous, because you are making a polite request rather than describing an action in progress.

Bakar mısınız, hesabı alabilir miyiz?

Excuse me — could we get the bill?

Saatlerdir kapıya bakmıyorum, kim geldi bilmiyorum.

I haven't been watching the door for hours, so I don't know who came in.

bakmak idioms and collocations

bakmak anchors several fixed expressions. Knowing the case each one carries is essential, because they vary.

Expression	Meaning	Case it governs
-A bakmak	to look at / look after	dative
işine bakmak	to mind one's own business	dative (possessed)
-A göre bakmak	to view from a perspective	dative + göre
yüzüne bakmamak	to refuse to speak to / snub	dative
hayata olumlu bakmak	to have a positive outlook on life	dative

Sen kendi işine bak, benimkine karışma.

You mind your own business — don't interfere in mine.

O kavgadan sonra aylarca yüzüme bile bakmadı.

After that argument he didn't even look me in the face for months.

Common mistakes

❌ Seni bakıyorum.

Incorrect — bakmak takes the dative, not the accusative; you're transferring the English 'look at you' directly.

✅ Sana bakıyorum.

I'm looking at you.

❌ Resimi baktım.

Incorrect — again, dative not accusative: the gaze is directed toward the picture.

✅ Resme baktım.

I looked at the picture.

❌ Çocuğu bakıyorum bu hafta.

Incorrect — to mean 'look after the child' you need the dative; çocuğu (accusative) would force the 'look at' reading and still be ungrammatical with bakmak.

✅ Çocuğa bakıyorum bu hafta.

I'm looking after the child this week.

❌ Bakar mısın?

Incorrect if you mean 'are you looking?' — the aorist bakar mısın? is a polite request ('would you look?'); the present-continuous bakıyor musun? is the one that asks 'are you looking?'

✅ Bakıyor musun, yoksa başka bir şeyle mi meşgulsün?

Are you looking, or are you busy with something else?

❌ Annemi bakıyorum, çok yaşlı.

Incorrect — caregiving 'look after' takes the dative: anneme bakıyorum.

✅ Anneme bakıyorum, çok yaşlı.

I look after my mother — she's very old.

💡

The fastest way to lock in bakmak-a is to overwrite the English instinct immediately. Whenever you catch yourself wanting an accusative ("look at it"), say the dative version aloud twice — ona bak, ona bak — before moving on. A wrong case becomes a habit fast; correct it while it's fresh.

Key takeaways

bakmak governs the dative -(y)A, where English uses "at": sana baktım ("I looked at you"), not *seni baktım.
It is the canonical lexical-case-government verb — proof that the verb, not the English preposition, decides the case.
The same verb, same dative, means both "look at" and "look after / take care of": çocuğa bakmak, anneme bakıyorum, hastaya bakmak.
Forms are regular: stem bak-, aorist bakar, past baktı (with -t-), future bakacak, evidential bakmış; aorist negative bakmam / bakmaz.
bakar mısınız? is the standard polite "excuse me" for getting attention.

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