İlkokul evimize yakın.

In Turkish, the verb to be is often not expressed in simple present-tense sentences, especially in the 3rd person singular.

So:

• İlkokul evimize yakın. literally works as Primary school our-house-to near.

A full English sentence needs is, but Turkish does not need an extra word here.

Compare:

• Okul büyük. = The school is big.
• Ev yakın. = The house is near.

In other tenses or persons, Turkish does show extra marking:

• Yakınım. = I am near.
• Yakındı. = It was near.

Because yakın normally goes with the dative case, which often corresponds to English to in expressions like near to.

So:

• ev = house
• evimiz = our house
• evimize = to our house / near our house

Breakdown:

• ev = house
• -imiz = our
• -e / -a = dative ending

Because the word ends up as evimiz + e, it becomes evimize.

This is very common with yakın:

• okula yakın = near the school
• bana yakın = near me / close to me
• merkeze yakın = near the center

-imiz is the 1st person plural possessive suffix, meaning our.

So:

• ev = house
• evimiz = our house

Turkish usually expresses possession with a suffix attached directly to the noun, instead of using a separate word like English our.

Other examples:

• arabamız = our car
• okulumuz = our school
• annemiz = our mother

Then the dative is added after that:

• evimiz
  • -e → evimize

Because Turkish is an agglutinative language: grammatical endings are usually added directly to the end of a word.

So instead of writing something separate like our house to, Turkish builds one word:

• ev
  • -imiz
    • -e → evimize

This is normal Turkish structure. Many meanings that English expresses with separate words are shown with suffixes in Turkish.

For example:

• evde = in the house
• evden = from the house
• evimize = to our house

Because yakın is the predicate here, and Turkish often puts the predicate at the end.

The sentence structure is basically:

• İlkokul = subject
• evimize yakın = predicate

So the order is natural:

• İlkokul evimize yakın.

Turkish word order is flexible, but the neutral pattern often places the key predicate last.

It is basically an adjective, meaning near/close, but in sentences like this it functions as the predicate.

So:

• yakın okul = a nearby school
  Here yakın directly describes a noun, so it works like a normal adjective.

• Okul yakın. = The school is near.
  Here it is the predicate.

Also, yakın commonly takes a dative complement:

• eve yakın = near the house
• bize yakın = near us

So it behaves a bit like English close to.

Turkish does not have a definite article like English the.

So ilkokul can mean:

• primary school
• the primary school

Which one is meant depends on context.

That is completely normal in Turkish. The language usually leaves definiteness to be understood from the situation, word order, or context.

Because ilkokul is the standard Turkish word for primary school / elementary school, and it is written as one word.

It comes historically from:

• ilk = first
• okul = school

But as a standard modern noun, it is written as:

• ilkokul

Similarly:

• ortaokul = middle school
• lise = high school

Yes, but it changes how the sentence feels.

• İlkokul evimize yakın.
  This is a normal full sentence: The primary school is near our house.

• Evimize yakın ilkokul
  By itself, this sounds more like a noun phrase, meaning the primary school near our house or a primary school near our house, rather than a complete neutral statement.

If you want a standard sentence, İlkokul evimize yakın is better.

Because it is the subject of the sentence, and subjects in Turkish are normally in the basic form of the noun, with no case ending.

So:

• ilkokul = subject
• evimize = dative phrase
• yakın = predicate

Only evimize gets a case ending, because yakın requires that relationship.

Yes, but the meaning changes slightly.

• evimize yakın = near our house / close to our house
• evimizin yanında = next to our house / beside our house

So yakın means general closeness, while yanında means much more specifically beside / next to.

Examples:

• İlkokul evimize yakın. = The primary school is near our house.
• İlkokul evimizin yanında. = The primary school is next to our house.

The suffixes change shape to match Turkish vowel harmony.

Starting with:

• ev → last vowel is e
• so the our suffix appears as -imiz
• then the dative becomes -e

So:

• ev
  • -imiz
    • -e → evimize

Compare with a back-vowel word:

• okul
  • -umuz
    • -a → okulumuza = to our school

So the exact form of the suffix depends on the vowels in the word it attaches to.