English "to be" is a full, irregular verb — am, is, are, was, were, been. Turkish has nothing like it. To say X is/was/seems Y, you do not pick a verb and conjugate it; you attach a small set of copular endings straight onto the predicate (a noun, adjective, or phrase). In the present, the "is" is frequently nothing at all: Hava güzel "The weather is nice" has no word for "is." This page is the map of the whole copular system — it shows you the four pieces and routes you to the page that handles each in detail.
The core idea: "to be" is endings, not a verb
Hold on to this, because everything else follows from it. Turkish marks "being something" by gluing person and tense information onto the predicate itself. There is no separate word to translate am / is / are / was. So:
- mutluyum = mutlu "happy" + -yum "I am" → "I am happy" (one word)
- öğretmenim = öğretmen "teacher" + -im "I am" → "I am a teacher"
- evdeymiş = ev "house" + -de "at" + -ymiş "(apparently) is" → "(apparently) he's at home"
The copula is real — it carries person, tense, and mood — but it lives inside the suffix, and in the present third person it is silent.
Ben öğretmenim, eşim de doktor.
I'm a teacher, and my spouse is a doctor.
Hava bugün çok güzel.
The weather is very nice today.
Two paradigms make up the system
The copula has two sources, and together they cover every tense and mood you need.
1. The zero-copula present. In the present tense, the predicate simply takes a personal ending — -(y)Im, -sIn, -Ø, -(y)Iz, -sInIz, -lAr — and the third-person singular ending is nothing. This is the everyday "is/am/are." Full treatment on the present zero-copula page.
2. The defective verb i- (imek). For the past, the reported/evidential, and the conditional of "to be," Turkish reaches for an old, defective verb i- (citation form imek). It has no infinitive use of its own in modern speech and no present tense — it exists only to carry these three forms. In modern Turkish it almost always attaches as a clitic suffix (with a buffer y after a vowel):
- i- + past → -(y)DI (idi): hastaydı "he was sick" — see the past copula idi
- i- + evidential → -(y)mIş (imiş): evdeymiş "(apparently) he's at home" — see the evidential copula -mIş
- i- + conditional → -(y)sA (ise): hazırsa "if he's ready" — see the conditional copula ise
| Copular meaning | Marker | Example (with öğretmen / hasta / evde) | Gloss | Detail page |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| present "is/am/are" | personal endings, 3sg = Ø | öğretmenim | I am a teacher | copula-present-zero |
| past "was/were" | -(y)DI (idi) | hastaydı | he/she was sick | copula-past-idi |
| evidential "(apparently) is" | -(y)mIş (imiş) | evdeymiş | he's at home (I hear) | copula-evidential-mis |
| conditional "if … is" | -(y)sA (ise) | hastaysa | if he is sick | copula-conditional-ise |
Çocukken çok yaramazdım.
I was very naughty as a child.
Telefonda söyledi, yolda gelirken çok yorgunmuş.
He said on the phone that he was apparently very tired on the way.
Müsaitsen bu akşam buluşalım.
If you're free, let's meet this evening.
The same endings work on verbs too
A crucial bonus: these copular markers are not just for noun and adjective predicates. The i- forms also stack onto fully conjugated verbs to build compound tenses. Gidiyordu "he was going" is gidiyor (present-continuous) + -du (past copula); gelmişmiş layers evidential on top. So learning the copula pays off twice — once for "to be," and again as the machinery behind Turkish's compound tenses. (Those compound tenses get their own pages; here just notice that the past/evidential/conditional you meet on nouns reappear on verbs.)
Ben gelince o çoktan gitmişti.
By the time I arrived, he had already left.
Eskiden her yaz köye giderdik.
We used to go to the village every summer.
Why a "defective" verb?
It is worth pausing on what defective means here, because it explains the whole shape of the system. A defective verb is one that exists only in some of its forms. İ- has no present tense and no everyday infinitive — you cannot say "imekteyim" in normal speech — yet it lives on robustly in the past (idi), evidential (imiş), and conditional (ise). The reason is historical: Turkish once had a fuller "to be" verb, and over centuries its forms eroded into clitic suffixes, leaving the present so reduced that it vanished entirely into the personal endings (and into silence for the third person). So the "missing" present copula is not an accident of the grammar — it is the end point of that erosion. Knowing this turns a list of exceptions into a single story: the present is the most worn-down corner of an old verb.
This also explains why the i- forms are written attached but behave like a separate word underneath. You may see the older, free spellings idi, imiş, ise in formal or literary text (hasta idi instead of hastaydı), and both are correct; the cliticized spelling is simply the modern, default one.
O zamanlar daha gençtik, her şey kolay görünüyordu.
We were younger back then, everything seemed easy.
How this differs from English
English forces a verb into every clause — even when the meaning is pure equation, you must say is: "The sky *is blue." Turkish does the opposite: in the present it prefers to say nothing (*Gökyüzü mavi). Where English conjugates one verb (be) across all persons and tenses, Turkish splits the job between a set of clitic endings (present) and a defective particle i- (past, evidential, conditional). And Turkish has a category English lacks entirely — the evidential copula -(y)mIş, which flags that you are reporting hearsay or an inference rather than firsthand fact: Zenginmiş "(They say / it seems) he's rich." There is no one-word English equivalent; you have to add "apparently" or "I hear."
Common mistakes
❌ Ben im öğretmen.
Incorrect — there is no standalone 'be' verb; the person ending attaches to the predicate: öğretmenim.
✅ Öğretmenim.
I'm a teacher.
❌ Hava güzel olur.
Incorrect — don't insert olmak 'to become' for a plain present 'is'; the bare predicate is enough: Hava güzel.
✅ Hava güzel.
The weather is nice.
❌ Hasta idi var.
Incorrect — the past copula -(y)DI already means 'was'; no extra word: hastaydı.
✅ Hastaydı.
He/she was sick.
❌ Ev-de imiş o.
Incorrect — the evidential cliticizes onto the predicate with buffer y: evdeymiş.
✅ Evdeymiş.
He's apparently at home.
The single underlying error is treating "to be" as a separate word. Once you accept that it is a suffix (or silence), these all dissolve.
Key takeaways
- Turkish has no verb "to be" to conjugate; "being" is marked by endings on the predicate, and the present third person is zero (Hava güzel).
- The system has two sources: the present personal endings and the defective verb i-.
- i- supplies the past -(y)DI, the evidential -(y)mIş, and the conditional -(y)sA, attaching as a clitic with a buffer y after vowels.
- These same i- forms also build Turkish's compound verb tenses (gidiyordu "was going").
- The evidential copula has no English equivalent — it flags hearsay or inference.
- Use this page as the map; follow the links for each paradigm's full treatment.
Related Topics
- Present Copula: Zero and Personal EndingsA1 — The present 'to be' is a set of person endings glued onto the predicate — doktorum 'I am a doctor', doktorsun 'you are' — with no ending at all in the third-person singular: Bu ev güzel.
- Past Copula: -(y)DI / idiA2 — To say 'was/were' with a noun, adjective, or location, Turkish attaches the past copula i-DI, which cliticizes as -(y)DI onto the predicate: öğretmendim 'I was a teacher', evdeydik 'we were at home'.
- Reported Copula: -(y)mIşB1 — The evidential copula -(y)mIş marks a state as hearsay, inference, or surprise rather than direct knowledge: O zenginmiş means 'apparently he's rich' — you were told it or infer it, you didn't witness it.
- 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').