Cidden, bu güzel bir iltifattı.

Cidden means something like seriously, really, or honestly.

In this sentence, it works like a sentence adverb:

• Cidden, bu güzel bir iltifattı.
• Seriously / Honestly, this was a nice compliment.

It shows the speaker’s attitude toward the whole statement, not just one word.

A very common near-equivalent in modern Turkish is gerçekten. Depending on context, cidden can sound a little more emphatic.

The comma separates cidden from the main sentence because it is being used as a comment on the whole sentence, like in English:

• Seriously, this was a nice compliment.

In informal writing, Turkish punctuation is not always perfectly consistent, but this comma is natural and helps show the pause.

İltifat means compliment, praise, or sometimes flattering attention, depending on context.

In this sentence:

• güzel bir iltifat = a nice compliment

A very common related expression is:

• iltifat etmek = to compliment someone

So:

• Bu güzel bir iltifattı. means that something someone said or did counted as a compliment.

Here, bir works like the English article a/an:

• güzel bir iltifat = a nice compliment

Without bir, the phrase would sound different. In many cases, bir is the normal choice when you mean a/an with a singular countable noun.

So:

• güzel bir iltifat = a nice compliment not
• the compliment and not
• compliment in a general sense

That is the normal Turkish word order when an adjective modifies a noun and you also use bir:

• güzel bir iltifat
• büyük bir ev
• iyi bir fikir

So Turkish often does:

adjective + bir + noun

rather than putting bir first the way English does.

For a learner, it is best to memorize this as the standard pattern.

Bu means this.

It refers to something just said, heard, or understood from context. For example, someone may have made a kind remark, and the speaker responds:

• Cidden, bu güzel bir iltifattı.
• Seriously, this was a nice compliment.

So bu points to a specific thing, not to compliments in general.

In Turkish, sentences like X was Y often use the copula attached to the noun, instead of a separate word like English was.

Here:

• iltifat = compliment
• -tı = was

So:

• iltifattı = was a compliment

This is very common in Turkish:

• Mutluydu. = He/She was happy.
• Öğretmendi. = He/She was a teacher.
• İltifattı. = It was a compliment.

Because the noun already ends in t:

• iltifat

And the past copular ending here is also -tı.

So when they come together:

• iltifat + tı → iltifattı

The double tt is just the result of the stem ending in t and the suffix beginning with t.

This is because of vowel harmony and consonant harmony.

The past copular suffix changes form:

• -dı / -di / -du / -dü or
• -tı / -ti / -tu / -tü

In iltifat, the last vowel is a, so the vowel in the suffix becomes ı.

Also, because the word ends in the voiceless consonant t, the suffix begins with t rather than d.

So:

• iltifat → iltifat-tı

Yes.

If you want to say This is a nice compliment, you would normally say:

• Bu güzel bir iltifat.

In the present tense, Turkish often has no overt word for “is” in this kind of sentence.

Compare:

• Bu güzel bir iltifat. = This is a nice compliment.
• Bu güzel bir iltifattı. = This was a nice compliment.

So the -tı specifically makes it past tense.

They are very close, and in many situations either one works.

• Cidden = seriously / really
• Gerçekten = really / truly

For this sentence, both are possible:

• Cidden, bu güzel bir iltifattı.
• Gerçekten, bu güzel bir iltifattı.

But they may feel slightly different in tone depending on context and speaker. Gerçekten is extremely common in everyday speech. Cidden is also common and often sounds a bit more direct or emphatic.

It is about a specific compliment.

You can tell because of:

• bu = this
• bir iltifat = a compliment
• -tı = was

So the speaker is referring to one particular remark, action, or moment and judging it afterward:

• This was a nice compliment.

It is not a general statement like Compliments are nice or This kind of thing is complimentary.