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To want someone else to do something, Turkish turns the wanted action into a noun, marks who is to act with a possessive ending, and closes it with the case the main verb requires.

Wanting someone else to act

Turkish has no infinitive way to say "I want you to come". The infinitive works only when one person both wants and acts. The moment the doer is a different person, the wanted verb becomes a noun: gelmeni istiyorum is "I want you to come", built from the verb gel and the endings that turn it into "your coming". The main verb istemek then takes that noun as its object.

Three things stack onto the verb. First the action becomes a noun; then a possessive ending names who does it — "my", "your", "his"; then a case ending, chosen by the main verb, marks the whole noun as its object. The single word gelmeni already packs "your coming, as object" together, and gelmeni istiyorum reads, piece for piece, "your-coming I-want".

Marking who acts

The action-noun on its own says nothing about who acts. A possessive ending does that — the very ending a noun takes for its owner: gelmem is "my coming", gelmen "your coming", gelmesi "his or her coming". An optional genitive pronoun — benim, senin, onun — can stand in front for emphasis, and the ending alone already carries the person.

Every row here is built on the front-vowel stem gel. A back-vowel verb like oku takes the same endings under back harmony, which is why "my reading" surfaces as okumamı before its case ending goes on. The person ending is the anchor: change it and you change who is meant to act.

Closing off the clause

Once the person is marked, one more ending closes the clause — a case ending, sitting at the very end of the noun. It is the main verb that decides which case. Most verbs of wanting and telling take an object, so the clause ends in the accusative: the final part of gelmeni carries the same accusative a plain object noun would.

The accusative is the most common ending, not the only one. A verb like korkmak "to fear" calls for the ablative, so its clause ends in kalmandan; sevinmek "to be glad" calls for the dative, giving gelmene. The clause simply wears whatever case its main verb governs, and the verb-government section below sorts these out.

Four worked sentences

Each sentence holds two subjects: the person doing the wanting or telling, on the main verb, and a different person doing the embedded action, marked by the possessive. Read the clause first, then the verb that governs it.

One subject or two

When the same person both wants and acts, the wanted verb stays a bare infinitive: gelmek istiyorum is "I want to come", with no possessive and no case. As soon as the doer is someone else, that infinitive will not do. The verb takes the -me ending and a possessive instead: gelmeni istiyorum, "I want you to come".

The classic slip is to keep the infinitive and merely add the other subject: senin gelmek istiyorum for "I want you to come". A genitive subject cannot sit with a bare infinitive; it forces the -me clause, so the right form is gelmeni istiyorum.

Wish or fact

The -me clause is for events that are wanted, not yet real. For events that already are facts, Turkish reaches for a different nominaliser, -dik: geldiğini biliyorum is "I know that you came", a settled thing. Set beside gelmeni istiyorum, "I want you to come", the shape is the same — possessive plus case — while the meaning flips from a wish to a fact.

The main verb picks the nominaliser. Verbs of wanting and requesting — istemek, rica etmek — take the -me clause, because their object is a wish. Verbs of knowing — bilmek — take the -dik clause, because their object is a fact.

The verb chooses the case

Not every main verb takes an accusative object. Some govern the ablative or the dative, and the clause simply ends in that case. korkmak "to fear" governs the ablative, so "I'm afraid you'll be late" is geç kalmandan korkuyorum, closing in kalmandan. sevinmek "to be glad" governs the dative, so "I was glad you came" is gelmene sevindim, closing in gelmene.

Requests and relayed commands

The -me clause is how Turkish frames requests and relayed commands. For a polite request, rica etmek "to request" takes the clause in the accusative, with the formal second-person-plural possessive: gelmenizi rica ederim is "I kindly ask you to come". To report a command — telling someone to do something — söylemek governs the clause too: gitmemi söyledi is "he told me to go".

When söylemek means "tell someone to do", it takes this wish-style clause; the same verb meaning "say that" takes the factual -dik clause. The case still comes from the verb: a command relayed to someone is its object, so it lands in the accusative.

The buffer with third person

A third-person clause carries one extra sound. After the possessive -si, a buffer consonant slides in before the case ending, so gelmesi "his coming" plus the accusative surfaces as gelmesini rather than two vowels colliding. You can hear it in gelmesini bekliyorum, "I'm waiting for him to come".

Wanting someone not to act

To want someone not to do something, the negative and the nominaliser stack — the same piece -me twice over. The first -me negates the verb ("not come"); the second turns it into a noun; then come the possessive and the case. So "I want you not to come" is gelmemeni istiyorum, where gel carries two -me endings before gelmemeni takes its accusative.

The bare form gelme shows how loaded this little piece is: on its own it is the command "don't come" and also the plain noun "coming". Inside the clause the second -me is the nominaliser, and the possessive and case that follow make its job unmistakable.