Double causative verbs (-ttır / -tırt)

In luxury hotel management, managers don't just assign tasks directly; they instruct staff to have tasks completed by others for their VIP guests. To express delegating an action through an intermediary, Turkish stacks two causative suffixes onto a single verb.

Stacking Causative Suffixes

To form a double causative ("to have someone get something done"), you add a second causative suffix to a verb that is already in the causative form. The specific suffixes depend on how the first causative stem ends:

• -t + -tır: If the first causative ends in -t (used for vowel-ending roots), the second causative is -tır / -tir / -tur / -tür (following 4-way vowel harmony).
• -dır + -t: If the first causative ends in -dır / -dir (used for many consonant-ending roots), the second causative is -t.

Instructing the Intermediary

When expressing who is being told to oversee the task (the intermediary), that person takes the dative case (-a / -e).

Let's look at verbs combining -t and -tır. Notice how the butler (kâhya) and the valet (vale) take the dative case:

Consonants and Auxiliary Verbs (-dır-t / -tir-t)

For verbs that form their first causative with -dır / -dir (or their voiceless variants), the second causative is -t. This rule applies heavily to compound verbs formed with the auxiliary verb etmek, which becomes ettirmek (first causative) and then ettirtmek (double causative).