O gece ev cehennem gibiydi.

Here, o means that. In o gece, it points to a specific night already known from the context: that night.

It is not the subject of the sentence. The subject is ev.

• o gece = that night
• bu gece = tonight / this night

So o is a demonstrative word here, not a personal pronoun.

Because Turkish often uses a bare time expression for when something happened.

So:

• o gece = that night
• o sabah = that morning
• o gün = that day

This works like an adverbial time phrase in English.

Using -de here would sound unnatural for the normal meaning of that night. The sentence is simply locating the situation in time, and Turkish commonly does that without a case ending.

Ev is the subject: the house.

The sentence structure is basically:

• O gece = time phrase
• ev = subject
• cehennem gibiydi = predicate

So the house is what is being described.

Because it is in its basic form, with no case marking, since it is the subject.

In Turkish, nouns often appear with no ending when they are the subject of the sentence.

Compare:

• Ev büyüktü. = The house was big.
• Evi gördüm. = I saw the house.

In the second sentence, evi has the accusative ending because it is a definite direct object. In your sentence, ev is not an object, so no such ending is needed.

Gibi means like or as if.

It is used to compare one thing to another:

• çocuk gibi = like a child
• taş gibi = like stone
• cehennem gibi = like hell

A key point for English speakers: gibi comes after the word it relates to, not before it. So Turkish says the equivalent of hell like, not like hell in word order.

Gibiydi is made from:

• gibi = like
• idi = was

So:

• cehennem gibiydi = was like hell

In natural Turkish, gibi idi contracts to gibiydi.

This is very common. Turkish often attaches or merges forms of idi with the previous word.

The y is a buffer consonant.

Turkish usually avoids putting two vowels directly next to each other when adding endings or linking forms. Since gibi ends in a vowel and idi begins with a vowel, Turkish inserts y:

• gibi + idi → gibiydi

This y does not add meaning by itself; it just makes pronunciation smoother.

The verbal idea is inside gibiydi.

Turkish often makes sentences without a separate main verb like English to be. In nominal sentences, the predicate can be a noun phrase, adjective, or phrase with gibi, and the past meaning is shown by idi or its shortened form.

So instead of a separate word exactly matching English was, Turkish uses:

• cehennem gibiydi = was like hell

This is a normal Turkish sentence pattern.

Because Turkish has no definite article equivalent to English the.

So ev can mean:

• house
• the house
• sometimes a house

The exact meaning depends on context.

In your sentence, the context makes it clear that ev means the house, not just any house.

No, Turkish word order is flexible, but the given order is very natural.

O gece ev cehennem gibiydi has a neutral, clear flow:

• time first: o gece
• subject next: ev
• predicate last: cehennem gibiydi

You could also say:

• Ev o gece cehennem gibiydi.

This is also correct, but it places a bit more focus on ev.

In Turkish, the end of the sentence is often the most important position, so keeping the predicate at the end is very common.

Yes, you could, but the nuance changes.

• cehennem gibiydi = it was like hell
• cehennemdi = it was hell

The version with gibi is a comparison. It sounds slightly less direct and more descriptive. The version without gibi is stronger and more dramatic.

So both are possible, but cehennem gibiydi is the more literal equivalent of was like hell.

No. It is often figurative.

Depending on context, cehennem gibi can suggest things like:

• extreme misery
• chaos
• unbearable tension
• terrible living conditions
• intense heat

So in this sentence, it probably does not mean the house literally resembled a religious hell. It more likely means the atmosphere or conditions in the house were awful that night.

Because in Turkish, third-person singular is often zero-marked, especially in this kind of structure.

So:

• Ben yorgundum. = I was tired.
• Sen yorgundun. = You were tired.
• O yorgundu. = He/she/it was tired.

Notice that the third-person singular form does not need an extra personal ending beyond the past copular form.

Likewise here:

• cehennem gibiydi = it was like hell

The subject ev already tells you what was like hell.