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The imperative gives orders and makes requests, and Turkish forms four of them — for a single 'you', a plural or polite 'you', and a third-person 'let him' and 'let them'.

What the imperative does

The imperative tells someone to act. For a single person it is the barest form in the language: the plain verb stem, with nothing added. gel is "come!" and bak is "look!". The infinitive gelmek "to come" loses its ending and what is left standing, gel, is already the command.

Beyond that singular you, Turkish builds three more commands: a plural or polite gelin "come", a third-person gelsin "let him come", and its plural gelsinler "let them come". Four persons in all, and the sections below take them one ending at a time.

How the endings harmonise

Each imperative ending that carries a vowel harmonises four ways with the last vowel of the stem, matching both its front-back quality and whether it is rounded. The grid lines up each vowel class with the plural ending and the third-person ending it forces.

So a stem whose last vowel is a takes -ın for the plural and -sın for the third person; e or i takes -in and -sin; o or u takes -un and -sun; and ö or ü takes -ün and -sün. Only the vowel moves — the n of the plural and the s of the third-person ending never change.

The four persons

Take gelmek "to come" through all four. The singular command is the bare stem gel. The plural adds -in: gelin, said to several people or as a polite "you". The third person adds -sin: gelsin "let him come". And the third-person plural puts the plural -sinler on top: gelsinler "let them come".

The plural has a more formal twin. Add -iniz and the command turns markedly polite: geliniz, the "come, please" of signs and public announcements. It is stiffer than everyday speech and belongs to written notices and careful address.

The full set on our reference verb gör "see" runs görün, görsün and görsünler alongside the bare gör — the same four endings on a different stem, generated in full as the paradigm.

The buffer after vowel-final stems

The plural ending opens with its own vowel, so when the stem already ends in a vowel a buffer -y- slides in to keep the two vowels apart. beklemek "to wait" has the vowel-final stem bekle, and its plural takes the buffered -yin: bekleyin, not the collision the bare ending would give. okumak "to read" does the same: okuyun "read".

A stem ending in a consonant needs no buffer — the ending attaches straight on, which is why gel gives the plain gelin, bak gives bakın, and oturmak "to sit" gives oturun. Two mistakes follow from getting this backwards: sliding a -y- in after a consonant produces the wrong gelyin, and dropping it after a vowel produces the wrong beklein.

The buffer surfaces in the negative plural too, because the negative ending closes on a vowel: gitmek "to go" gives gitmeyin "do not go", with the -y- sitting between the negative and the plural.

Five worked forms

Read each of these as a command aimed at someone — the bare stem for one person, the endings for the plural and the third person.

No command for oneself

There is no first-person imperative. You cannot order yourself the way you order someone else, so the paradigm stops at four persons — the two "you" forms and the third-person "let" forms such as gelsin "let him come". An invented gelim "let me come" is simply not Turkish.

The wish that would sit in that gap — "let me come", "may I go" — is carried by a different mood, the optative. Its first person is geleyim "let me come", and that is what a learner reaches for to command themselves. It is a mood of its own, not an imperative.

Plural and politeness

The plural command does double duty. Said to a group, gelin is simply "come, all of you". Said to one person, that same gelin is a polite "come" — Turkish uses the plural as a mark of respect, exactly as many languages use a plural "you". Choosing it over the bare gel softens an order into a request.

For extra courtesy Turkish adds lütfen "please" and reaches for the fuller geliniz on formal notices. buyurun "here you are / go ahead / please come in", built the same way from buyurmak, is the everyday polite invitation you will hear across shop counters and in doorways.

Third-person commands

The third-person imperative gives an order about someone who is not being spoken to — the English "let him" or "have her". gelsin is "let him come" or "have him come", and gelsinler is its plural, "let them come". It often carries a shade of "he should" or "he may as well", a wish handed on through whoever is listening.

You reach for it to pass a command along — "tell him to come" becomes gelsin — and in set phrases of goodwill, where the third person addresses fate rather than a hearer. The bare stems it rides on stay visible: gör gives görsün "let him see", bak gives baksın "let him look", and oturmak gives otursun "let him sit".

Negative commands

A negative command slots the negative suffix between the stem and any personal ending. The bare singular is the plainest case: gel "come" becomes gelme "do not come", with -me on a front-vowel stem and -ma on a back-vowel one.

In the plural the negative and the plural stack, and because the negative ends in a vowel the buffer -y- reappears: gitmek "to go" gives gitmeyin "do not go", the negative followed by the buffered plural. The third-person negatives build the same way, with the -sinler and -sınlar endings riding on top of the negative.