English has three little words for getting someone else to act — make, have, let — plus the bare verb: "I made him wait", "I had the car washed", "I let her read it". Turkish collapses all of that into a single piece of morphology: the causative suffix. Attach it to a verb stem and the verb now means "cause that action to happen". This page covers the single causative; stacking two or more is handled in Double and triple causatives. It is one of the most powerful — and most under-used by learners — corners of Turkish voice.
What the causative does to the sentence
The causative does two things at once. It adds a new participant — the causer, the person who makes the action happen — and it demotes the old subject to an object. So a one-actor verb becomes a two-actor verb, and a two-actor verb becomes a three-actor verb.
Compare okumak "to read" with its causative okutmak "to make/have read":
| Subject | Verb | Old subject (causee) | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Plain | Çocuk (the child) | oku-du (read) | — |
| Causative | Ben (I) | okut-tum (made read) | çocuğ-a (the child, dative) |
Çocuğa kitap okuttum.
I had the child read a book.
Garson bizi yarım saat bekletti.
The waiter kept us waiting for half an hour.
In Çocuğa kitap okuttum, ben is the new causer, çocuğa (dative) is the demoted reader, and kitap is what gets read. The case the causee takes — dative or accusative — depends on whether the base verb already had an object; that is the subject of argument marking, but the short version is: if the base verb is transitive (already has an object, like okumak "read X"), the causee goes dative (çocuğa); if the base verb is intransitive (no object, like gülmek "laugh"), the causee goes accusative (çocuğu güldürdüm "I made the child laugh").
The allomorphs: -DIr, -t, and the lexical -Ir/-It
The causative has several shapes. The choice is mostly predictable from the stem, with a memorised set of exceptions — exactly the situation Turkish learners should expect.
-t after polysyllabic stems ending in a vowel, l, or r
The lightest allomorph, -t, attaches to longer stems that end in a vowel or in the liquids l / r.
| Stem | Causative | English |
|---|---|---|
| oku- (read) | okutmak | to have read |
| bekle- (wait) | bekletmek | to make wait |
| otur- (sit) | oturtmak | to seat someone |
| temizle- (clean) | temizletmek | to have cleaned |
Misafirleri salona oturttum.
I seated the guests in the living room.
Gömleklerimi her hafta kuru temizlemeciye temizletiyorum.
I have my shirts cleaned at the dry cleaner's every week.
-DIr after most other stems
The general-purpose causative is -DIr, harmonising four ways for its vowel (-dır/-dir/-dur/-dür) and softening to -tır/-tir/-tur/-tür after a voiceless consonant. It is the default for consonant-final polysyllabic stems and for many monosyllables.
| Stem | Causative | English |
|---|---|---|
| yap- (do/make) | yaptırmak | to have done/made |
| gül- (laugh) | güldürmek | to make laugh |
| ye- (eat) | yedirmek | to feed / make eat |
| öl- (die) | öldürmek | to kill (make die) |
Bu komedi herkesi güldürdü.
This comedy made everyone laugh.
Bebeğe yemeğini yedirdim.
I fed the baby its food.
Evi tamamen yeniden yaptırdık.
We had the house completely rebuilt.
Note öldürmek "to kill" — literally "to make die". Turkish often expresses what English does with a separate verb by causativising the intransitive: öl- "die" → öldür- "kill".
-Ir / -It for a closed lexical set
A small, fixed group of (mostly monosyllabic) stems take -Ir or -It instead. There is no rule that predicts these — you memorise them. The most common:
| Stem | Causative | English |
|---|---|---|
| iç- (drink) | içirmek | to make drink |
| düş- (fall) | düşürmek | to drop (make fall) |
| piş- (be cooked) | pişirmek | to cook something |
| kork- (fear) | korkutmak | to frighten |
| geç- (pass) | geçirmek | to spend (time) / see off |
Hastaya ilacını içirdim.
I gave the patient their medicine (made them drink it).
Telefonunu yere düşürme, kırılır.
Don't drop your phone on the floor, it'll break.
Because this set is lexical, the safest move when you meet a new verb is to check rather than guess. The full allomorph breakdown, including the awkward middle cases, lives in the causative reference table.
Don't reach for yapmak or etmek
The single biggest conceptual error is translating English "make" or "have" with the verbs yapmak ("do/make") or etmek ("do"). The English make in "make someone laugh" is a causative auxiliary, not the lexical verb "manufacture". In Turkish, that meaning is inside the suffix, not a separate word.
Onu çok beklettim, özür dilerim.
I kept him waiting a long time, I'm sorry.
Saçımı kestirdim.
I got my hair cut.
Saçımı kestirdim literally "I had my hair cut" — kes- "cut" → kestir- "have cut". An English speaker often wants yapmak here ("I made my hair cut"), which is simply not Turkish.
Common mistakes
❌ Çocuğu güldürmek yaptım.
Incorrect — 'make' expressed with yapmak instead of the causative suffix
✅ Çocuğu güldürdüm.
I made the child laugh.
"Make laugh" is one word: güldür-. There is no helper verb.
❌ Berberde saçımı kestim.
Misleading — this says you cut your own hair at the barber's
✅ Berberde saçımı kestirdim.
I got my hair cut at the barber's.
Without the causative -tir-, kestim means you did the cutting. The causative is what shows someone else did it for you.
❌ Çocuk kitap okuttum.
Incorrect — the demoted reader must be in the dative, not bare
✅ Çocuğa kitap okuttum.
I had the child read a book.
Because okumak is transitive, the causee takes the dative: çocuğa.
❌ Hastaya ilacını içtirdim.
Incorrect allomorph — iç- belongs to the -Ir set, not -DIr
✅ Hastaya ilacını içirdim.
I gave the patient their medicine.
iç- takes the lexical -ir: içirmek. İçtirmek is not the standard causative of "drink".
❌ Telefonu yere düştürdüm.
Incorrect allomorph — düş- takes -ür, giving düşür-
✅ Telefonu yere düşürdüm.
I dropped the phone on the floor.
düş- "fall" → düşür- "drop", another member of the closed -Ir set.
Key takeaways
- The causative means make / have / let someone do — all one suffix, no helper verb.
- It adds a causer and demotes the old subject: dative if the base verb was transitive (çocuğa okuttum), accusative if intransitive (çocuğu güldürdüm).
- Allomorphs: -t after long vowel/l/r stems (okut, beklet, oturt), -DIr as the default (yaptır, güldür, yedir), -Ir/-It for a memorised set (içir, düşür, korkut).
- Never translate causative "make/have" with yapmak or etmek — the meaning is in the morphology.
- To stack two causatives (yaptırt-, okuttur-), see Double and triple causatives; for the full allomorph list see the causative reference table.
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Start learning Turkish→Related Topics
- Double and Triple CausativesB2 — How Turkish stacks the causative suffix to add link after link to a chain of command — yaptırtmak 'have someone have it made' — and how each intermediate agent is case-marked.
- Voice: Passive, Causative, Reflexive, ReciprocalB1 — The four voice suffixes that sit between stem and tense, how each reshapes a verb's arguments, and how they stack in a fixed order.
- Causative Allomorph ReferenceB2 — Which causative suffix each Turkish verb takes — the predictable -t and -DIr classes plus the lexical -Ir/-It/-Ar set you must learn.
- The Passive -Il / -In / -nB1 — How to build the Turkish passive from any verb stem, choosing -Il, -In, or -n by the final sound, and how the impersonal passive expresses generic 'one/you'.