8 Past Tenses in Turkish (with conjugations)

There is not only one past tense in Turkish, nor in any language. You’ll see different types of past tenses with explanations and examples in this page.

Let’s begin:

1. Simple Past Tense in Turkish:

you must use simple past tense (-DI) to describe an action that happened in the past. Similar to English, Turkish past simple is used to describe things that happened and finished in the past. The suffix of past simple is -di/dı/ti/tı.

Different from miş-past, di-past is used to describe an action that the speaker has witnessed. Conversely, miş-past defines the actions that the speaker has only heard but not witnessed.

Simple Past Tense in Turkish – Examples:

*accusative form

Singular

Plural

How to make the Simple Past negative?

You need to add the negative suffix -me/ma after the verb root, before the personal pronouns. If the verb root has one of back vowels, you have to add -ma to the verb root. If the verb root has one of front vowels, you have to add -me. After the negative suffix, you add the past tense suffix -DI.

If the action happens in the past over a period of time, you’d rather use Past Continuous Tense.

Past Tense for All Pronounce

2. Past Continuous Tense in Turkish:

when describing continuing actions or events in the past (before now), you use past continuous tense. Mainly, to describe an event/action that is interrupted by another event/action, past continuous tense is used (similar to the continuous past of English). To refer to the concept of past continuous in Turkish, you’d call ‘geçmiş zamanda süreklilik’ or ‘sürekli geçmiş zaman’. Let’s look into the word ‘sürekli’.

Singular

Plural

If you wonder something, you can ask it in a polite way with this tense.

Past Continuous Tense in Turkish – Examples:

Future in the Past in Turkish:

You use this tense to refer the future from the perspective of past. It is translated to ‘was going to‘.

3. Future in the Past – Examples:

Singular

Plural

4. Second form of the future-in-the-past

you can translate into English as ‘would‘. It’s the same concept but you use one of the suffixes of aorist (-ar/-er/-ır/-ir).

5. Necessitative Past in Turkish:

the structure of the necessitative past is translated into English as ‘should have‘. In Turkish, necessitative is called as ‘gereklilik kipi‘.

Singular

Plural

6. Turkish Conditional Past Tense in Turkish:

is similar to the ‘If only + past participle‘ of English. You use this structure to express wishes or regrets. As you know -se/-sa suffix is of subjunctive mood (optative), and when used together with -di/-dı/du/dü past tense suffix, it means as followed:

Turkish Conditional Past – Examples:

Singular

Plural

7. Turkish Pluperfect:

Google describes pluperfect: ‘denoting an action completed prior to some past point of time specified or implied, formed in English by had and the past participle, as in he had gone by then‘. That’s also valid for Turkish use. Do not get confused with ‘miş‘ before the past tense suffix. It is not of inferential meaning.

Pluperfect in Turkish- Table

Singular

Plural

Pluperfect in Turkish – Examples

8. Reported Past Tense in Turkish (miş-past)

This is my favorite tense! It is used to describe things that you have not witnessed. This tense type does not exist in the majority of the languages so it’s often confused, however, it is very fun and easy. Let’s explain with an example:

Imagine that you saw one of your friends falling down the stairs. (Let’s assume that this friend’s name is Selin.) If you want to mention Selin’s falling to another friend (Emre), you’d say:

However, if Emre wants to tell anybody about this action, he’d use miş-past because he has not witnessed of Selin’s falling but only heard of it. So, then,

Emre: Bugün Selin merdivenlerden düşmüş.

Reported Past Tense in Turkish (miş-past) – Examples

For further examples, you can check Reported Past Tense page.