When looking for the perfect hotel, restaurant, or apartment, you often have specific criteria. In Turkish, describing a place by what it has or lacks involves a special type of relative clause using the words olan and olmayan.
Specifying What a Place Has
Normally, to say "there is alcohol in its rooms," you use var (Odalarında alkol var). To turn this into a descriptive phrase like "a hotel that has alcohol in its rooms," you drop var and replace it with olan (being / which is).
The formula is simple: Locative phrase (Odalarında) + Item (alkol) + olan + Head Noun (otel).
Specifying What a Place Lacks
To describe a place by what it lacks, you apply the exact same structure but replace yok (there is not) with olmayan (not being / which is not). This is incredibly useful for setting strict dietary restrictions or stating your preferences.
Room and Venue Features
You will frequently use this structure to hunt for specialized amenities. By changing the locative word at the beginning of the clause, you can specify exactly where the feature needs to be—whether in the basement, the bathroom, or the garden.
Describing Surroundings
You are not limited to what is physically inside a building. You can use spatial words like önünde (in front of it) or yakınında (near it) as your locative phrase to describe the venue's outside environment.
