The Imperative

The imperative is how you tell someone to do something — and Turkish builds it from the most minimal piece of the verb imaginable. For an informal "you," the command is simply the bare stem with nothing added at all: gel "come!", otur "sit!", bak "look!". From there the language scales up politeness by adding suffixes, and it even has a dedicated third-person form for "let him do it." This page covers the whole set of direct commands; for "don't…" prohibitions see Negative Commands, and for the softer "let's…" and "shall I…?" suggestions see the optative.

The imperative paradigm

Notice there is no first-person imperative — you cannot command yourself. "Let me go" and "let's go" belong to the optative, a separate mood. The imperative covers only second and third person.

The 2sg command is the bare stem

This is the single most important fact about Turkish imperatives, and it surprises English speakers because it feels like there should be "more" to a verb. There isn't. The dictionary form you look up is the infinitive gelmek "to come," and if you simply remove the -mek/-mak infinitive ending, what remains — gel- — is already the command. The stem is the imperative.

Because the stem is the most basic form in the whole language, every grammar table you will ever see uses it as the citation form — and that table entry doubles as a ready-made command. This is the opposite of English, where "go!" happens to coincide with the base form but "is" has no imperative at all and many verbs feel awkward bare. In Turkish the bare-stem imperative is completely systematic: gül "smile," dur "stop," gir "come in," al "take."

Politeness scales up: -(y)In and -(y)InIz

Address more than one person, or a single person you want to be polite to, and you add -(y)In. This is the everyday polite/plural command — what you say to a customer, a stranger, an older person, or a group.

The -(y)In suffix harmonises four ways (in / ın / un / ün) following the four-way vowel harmony. It has no vowel of its own to clash with the stem, so it simply takes the harmonising I vowel: gelin, oturun, görün, bakın.

For an extra degree of formality — official notices, signs, ceremonious speech, addressing a large or respected audience — Turkish stacks a further -Iz on top to give -(y)InIz. You will see it on public signs ("İtiniz" Push, "Çekiniz" Pull) and hear it in formal announcements.

Note the high-frequency word buyurun (or the more formal buyurunuz). It is the imperative of buyurmak and works as an all-purpose polite "go ahead / here you are / please come in / after you." A waiter handing you a menu, a host opening a door, a clerk inviting you to speak — all say buyurun. Learn it as a fixed courtesy word; you will use it constantly.

The buffer y after vowel stems

If the stem ends in a vowel, a buffer -y- slides in before -(y)In so two vowels never touch. That is what the (y) in the formula marks. The stem bekle- "wait" gives bekle-y-in → bekleyin, not beklein.

Compare a consonant-final stem like diz- "arrange," which takes plain dizin with no buffer, against the vowel-final bekle- → bekleyin, başla- → başlayın "start (pl)," oku- → okuyun "read (pl)." The buffer is purely mechanical — it appears exactly when, and only when, the stem ends in a vowel.

Third person: -sIn ("let him/her/it")

To issue a command about someone who is not present — "let him come," "may she succeed," "let it stay" — Turkish uses -sIn. English has no single tense for this; it patches together "let him…", "have her…", or the more formal "may…". Turkish does it with one tidy suffix, and -sIn harmonises four ways (sin / sın / sun / sün).

The third-person form carries a wide emotional range. It can be a literal instruction passed through a third party ("tell him he should come"), a blessing or wish (Allah yardım etsin "may God help"), or a resigned "let them, then." For the plural — "let them come" — add -lAr to get -sInlAr: gelsinler, otursunlar. This plural is often dropped in speech when the plurality is already clear from context, exactly as elsewhere in the grammar.

A note on stress

Imperative endings behave like ordinary suffixes for stress: the accent lands on the last syllable, so it rides onto the ending — gelİN, oturUN, gelsİN (the capitalised syllable is the stressed one). The bare 2sg has its stress on its own final syllable as usual. This matters most by contrast with the negative imperative, where stress jumps backward onto the syllable right before -mA- — the cue listeners use to catch a "don't" at speed. For the full system see word stress.

Common mistakes

English learners reach for the dictionary form gelmek "to come" as though it were the command, the way "to go" can feel basic in English. But the infinitive -mek/-mak is a noun ending in Turkish. The command is what is left after you strip it off.

The fourth one is not ungrammatical, just socially mismatched: pairing the courtesy word lütfen with a bare informal stem sends mixed signals. Match the politeness of the verb to the politeness of the situation — lütfen oturun, not lütfen otur, to someone you would address formally.

Key takeaways

• The 2sg imperative is the bare verb stem — the most minimal form in the language: gel, otur, bak, al.
• Politeness scales -Ø → -(y)In → -(y)InIz: informal gel, polite/plural gelin, very formal geliniz. Learn buyurun as an all-purpose courtesy word.
• A buffer -y- appears after vowel stems before -(y)In: bekle-y-in → bekleyin.
• -sIn makes a third-person command, "let him/her/it…": gelsin, kalsın, with plural -sInlAr (gelsinler).
• There is no first-person imperative — "let me / let's" belongs to the optative instead.
• For prohibitions, insert -mA- before the ending; see Negative Commands. For the full courtesy toolkit, see making polite requests.