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Turkish has no word for 'when' or 'because': it adds a participle plus a possessive ending to the verb, then a time or reason word, and the whole clause becomes adverbial.

Turning a verb into a clause

Where English has separate words — "when", "because", "as" — Turkish loads the same meaning onto the verb and a following word. geldiği zaman is "when he came", and gördüğüm için is "because I saw". The verb takes the -DIK participle and a possessive ending, and the small word after it — zaman, için and its kin — sets the meaning of the whole clause.

The result is a subordinate clause that behaves like a single adverb. geldiği zaman modifies the main verb the way "yesterday" or "suddenly" would, and everything up to the anchoring word is inside that clause. Turkish sets the whole thing before the main verb, in the slot English fills with "when …," or "because …,".

Building the participle

The clause is built on the -DIK participle. Its vowel harmonises four ways with the last vowel of the stem, and its first consonant is a d after a voiced sound and hardens to a t after a voiceless one. So a stem like gelmek gives -dik, while the voiceless-final bakmak gives -tık.

In this construction the participle never stands bare: a possessive vowel always follows it, and under that vowel the final k softens. That is why the worked forms read geldiği, gördüğüm and baktığım, with a soft seam, where the grid still shows the hard-final -dik and -tık.

Adding the possessive

After the participle comes a possessive ending that names who does the action. It agrees with the subject of the clause, which itself stands in the genitive: benim pairs with a first-person possessive, giving gördüğüm; senin with a second-person one, giving söylediğin; onun with a third-person one, giving geldiği. The possessive, not a separate pronoun, is what carries the person.

This possessive is the hinge of the whole pattern. It is what turns the participle from a plain "the one who came" into the anchored geldiği that a time or reason word can attach to. Leave it off and there is nothing for zaman or için to hang on.

Six worked clauses

Six frames across the five anchoring words and all four harmony classes. Read each as a single adverbial: the participle plus possessive on the left, the anchoring word on the right.

The possessive is not optional

Drop the possessive and the clause collapses. geldik zaman, gördük için and söyledik gibi look like plausible shortenings, yet they are not Turkish: the bare participle has nothing to anchor the following word, and with no possessive vowel the final k never softens. The clause needs geldiği zaman, not geldik zaman.

• geldiği zaman — correct: "when he came", with the third-person possessive in place.
• geldik zaman — wrong: the possessive has been dropped and the k left hard; no one says this.

Saying when

For "when", the anchoring word is zaman, "time" — geldiği zaman is literally "the time he came". vakit is an older word for the same thing, so geldiği vakit means what geldiği zaman does. Turkish also offers a one-word route: fold the ending straight onto the participle and geldiğinde says "when he came" in a single word.

Because, as, and although

The same participle-plus-possessive takes on other jobs by swapping the final word. için gives reason — gördüğüm için, "because I saw". gibi gives manner — söylediğin gibi, "as you said". kadar gives measure — istediğin kadar, "as much as you want". hâlde gives concession — hasta olduğu hâlde, "although he is ill".

One detail sits inside hasta olduğu hâlde: "ill" is an adjective, so there is no verb to carry the participle. olmak, "to be", steps in — olduğu is "the fact of being" — and the concession rides on it. The same move covers any adjective or noun in an "although X is …" clause.