Turkish There is/are

Learn how to say there is and there are in Turkish

This tutorial was written by Ömer & Mehmet Sener. If you are interested in authentic uses of language, go to Turkish realia for photos taken in Turkey.

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There is/are in Turkish

The meaning of “There is, there are” is conveyed through the word var. It means “there is / it exists”.

Otoparkta beş araba var. There are five cars in the parking lot.
Bahçemizde üç ağaç var. There are three trees in our garden.

To say “There aren’t, there isn’t”, the word yok is used, which means “there isn’t / it doesn’t exist”.

Apartmanımızda hiç Amerikalı yok. There are no Americans in our apartment.

Saying you have something is fairly easy in Turkish. For this purpose, the possessive suffixes and the word var are used together.

Küçük bir kaplumbağam var. I have a (lit. “my”) small tortoise.
Sāhilde evi var. He/she has a (lit. “his/her”) house by the seaside.

For negation, yok is used in the same way.

Kedimiz yok. We don’t have a (lit. “our”) cat.

To ask questions like “do you have, don’t you have”, var and yok are used with the question particle, making var mı and yok mu.

Arabanız var mı? Do you have a (lit. “your [pl. or formal] car”) car?
Bilgisayarları yok mu? Don’t they have a computer of their own?