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The reciprocal-collective voice adds a suffix to a plain verb so that its plural subjects act on one another or all together — 'see' turns into 'meet', and 'laugh' into 'laugh together'.

What the reciprocal voice does

Turkish has a dedicated verb form for what people do to each other or as a group. A voice suffix attaches to a plain verb and reshapes its meaning: görmek 'to see' becomes görüşmek 'to meet, to see one another', and gülmek 'to laugh' becomes gülüşmek 'to laugh together'. The subject is normally plural, because it takes two to act in either way.

The one suffix carries two closely linked senses. In the reciprocal sense the participants act on one another: öpmek 'to kiss' gives öpüşmek 'to kiss each other'. In the collective sense they act side by side, at the same time: gülmek gives gülüşmek 'to laugh together'. Context decides which reading applies; the ending is the same for both.

Vowel harmony picks the ending

The suffix opens with a high vowel that harmonises four ways with the stem's last vowel. A front unrounded vowel takes -iş, a back unrounded vowel -ış, a back rounded vowel -uş, and a front rounded vowel -üş. So bakmak gives bakışmak and dövmek gives dövüşmek. Rounding counts as much as front and back: a rounded stem like görmek pulls the rounded -üş, giving görüşmek, and the half-harmonised görişmek, which keeps front but forgets rounding, is wrong.

When the stem already ends in a vowel, the high vowel has nothing to sit between and drops, leaving a bare -ş. tanımak 'to recognise' becomes tanışmak 'to meet, get acquainted', and anlamak 'to understand' becomes anlaşmak 'to agree'. Keeping the buffer vowel here gives the wrong anlaışmak; dropping it from a consonant stem gives the equally wrong bakşmak for bakışmak. Whatever the last vowel, a vowel-final stem takes only -ş — the third column of the table.

How a reciprocal verb is formed

A reciprocal verb is a derived verb, built in three visible pieces: the plain stem, the voice suffix, then the ordinary infinitive ending. görmek loses its infinitive ending, takes the voice suffix, and closes with the ending again to give görüşmek; bulmak becomes buluşmak the same way. Because the suffix begins with a vowel or is a single consonant, a stem ending in p, ç, t or k keeps that consonant — no softening happens here.

A reciprocal or collective action needs more than one participant, so the subject is normally plural. öpüştüler 'they kissed each other' and bakıştılar 'they exchanged glances' both carry a plural subject, and çocuklar gülüştü 'the children laughed together' names its plural subject outright. A singular subject shows up only with a separate partner phrase, which the usage sections below take up.

Five worked verbs

Read each of these as a base verb reshaped into a reciprocal or collective one. The middle piece is the voice suffix; everything to its left is the plain verb you already know.

The base verb and its reciprocal

The reciprocal verb means something other than its base, and reading it as the base is the mistake to guard against. görmek is 'to see', while görüşmek is 'to meet, to be in touch': Ali'yle görüştük is 'we met with Ali', not 'we saw Ali'. öpmek is 'to kiss' someone, while öpüşmek is 'to kiss each other'. The suffix has added a mutual, two-sided meaning that the plain verb does not carry.

Acting on one another

In its reciprocal sense the verb says the participants do the action to one another. görüşmek is 'to see one another, to meet', öpüşmek is 'to kiss each other', and dövüşmek is 'to fight, to come to blows' — dövmek alone is 'to beat' someone, and the reciprocal makes the beating mutual. English usually spells this out with 'each other' or 'one another'; Turkish folds it into the ending.

Acting together

The collective sense is subtly different: the participants do the action at the same time, as a group, without necessarily aiming it at each other. gülüşmek is 'to laugh together' — a roomful of people laughing at once, not laughing at one another. gülmek is simply 'to laugh'; the voice suffix gathers the laughers into one shared act, as in çocuklar gülüştü 'the children laughed together'.

Meeting up with someone

When only one side is the grammatical subject, the other joins in through a separate phrase, often marked 'with'. Ali'yle görüştük is 'we met with Ali', and buluşmak 'to meet up' works the same way — you arrange to meet up with a named person, so buluştuk is 'we met up'. Here the subject can even be singular, because the partner supplies the second participant the meaning needs.

Words in their own right

Many of these verbs have drifted far enough from their base that the dictionary lists them as their own headwords, and Turkish stores them as whole words. tanışmak is felt as 'to meet, to get acquainted', not as a live derivation of tanımak 'to recognise' — tanıştık is the everyday 'we've met'. Some are fixed idioms: görüşürüz and yarın görüşürüz mean 'see you' and 'see you tomorrow', and anlaştık means 'we agreed' or, at the end of a bargain, 'it's a deal'.