Turkish Accents and Dialects: A Regional Guide
For readers in a hurry: Standard Turkish pronunciation is traditionally modeled on educated Istanbul speech, the Turkish of the news and of every lesson on this site. Regional speech, called ağız in Turkish, changes sounds and sometimes grammar: seviyor ("loves") is sevey in Kosovo, and akşam ("evening") is aḫşam in Erzurum. One study of Kars province found the word değil ("not") written down in 13 different forms.
A short Turkish video about the word değil reached me recently. It says that both the Turkish Language Association (TDK) dictionary and the Kubbealtı dictionary give değil, while diction teachers recommend something closer to diil. It then lists regional forms and asks viewers how the word is said in their hometown.
I speak Istanbul Turkish, the variety this site is built on. The video sent me looking for two things: why Istanbul speech became the model for "correct" Turkish and what the rest of Türkiye does with the same words.
Why Istanbul speech became the standard
Istanbul speech was itself a meeting of many varieties. After 1453, Mehmed II settled Turkish families from Konya, Aksaray, Larende (Karaman) and Ereğli in the city, and migration from Anatolia and the Balkans continued for centuries. The language historian Hayati Develi adds that the speech of the court and the learned classes followed a written standard that had already taken shape in Bursa, Edirne and Amasya before the conquest.
The debate over a simpler written Turkish ran through the late Ottoman period, and 1911 is one of its best-known moments. That year the literary magazine Genç Kalemler (Young Pens) published its "New Language" manifesto, which argued that the national language should be developed on the basis of Istanbul speech. Ziya Gökalp later summed up Istanbul Turkish as "the speech of Istanbul women," and Ömer Seyfettin described it as the plain, natural Turkish of the city's native Turkish women. After the alphabet reform of 1928, the language commission that prepared the new grammar named "the literary Istanbul dialect" as its model.
Some people objected at the time. The writer Tâhirülmevlevî said his family had lived in Istanbul for three generations and he had never heard an Istanbulite say gelmiştir or olmuştur, the formal written endings the new rules relied on. Develi argues that the reformers were really describing the shared written language that had developed in Anatolia and the Ottoman world over roughly five centuries, and he concludes that calling standard Turkish "Istanbul Turkish" is incorrect. Ertuğrul Yaman, writing in the TDK's journal Türk Dili, takes the opposite view: standard Turkish was shaped on the basis of spoken Istanbul Turkish.
For pronunciation, Istanbul did become the reference. Gotthelf Bergsträsser's phonetics of Turkish, published in Turkish as Türk Fonetiği, was based on the pronunciation of the educated Istanbulite. Spoken Istanbul Turkish, the city's own ağız, has habits the written standard hides. Develi lists yannız for yalnız (alone), kaştı for kaçtı (ran away), koşuşuyollar for koşuşuyorlar (they're rushing about), āmet for Ahmet, and almîm for almayayım (let me not take it). Earlier records exist too: in 1790 the French priest Viguier, who had lived in Istanbul for several years, published a grammar with Turkish written in Latin letters, and noted that educated speakers said zeman and fekat for zaman (time) and fakat (but).
The paragraph below contains several of these habits, including yalnız, almayayım and the future tense. In the recording I read it twice, first slowly and exactly as written, then in my everyday Istanbul pronunciation.
Bu akşam ne yapacağını bilmiyorum ama ben evde kalacağım. Yağmur yağıyor, dışarı çıkmak istemiyorum. Öğretmenim yarın gelecek, ödevim de daha bitmedi. Yalnız bir sorun var: çay kalmadı, değil mi? Neyse, birazdan markete gideceğim ama bu sefer fazla bir şey almayayım.
I don't know what you're going to do this evening, but I'm staying home. It's raining, and I don't want to go out. My teacher is coming tomorrow, and I haven't finished my homework yet. There's just one problem: we're out of tea, aren't we? Anyway, I'll go to the market in a bit, but this time I'd better not buy too much.
The idea of Istanbul Turkish as the most refined form of the language has its own long history. Some writers, Mehmet Gümüşkılıç among them, describe Istanbul speech as fading since the mid-twentieth century and see broadcasters with regional accents as part of the cause. This is one view in Turkish public debate. In Develi's terms, spoken Istanbul Turkish is the Istanbul ağız, a regional variety in its own right.
Turkish Language Reform by Lewis
How modern standard Turkish was shaped after 1928, from the new alphabet to newly coined words.
Değil, diil, deal, döy
In değil, the ğ sits between e and i. In careful speech it is often heard as a light y, close to deyil. In faster speech it can drop out; the two vowels then merge into a long vowel, and the e moves toward i, giving deel or diil. This is my own description of the process; the sources record the variants without stating a rule. The future tense shows a similar narrowing: we write geleceğim (I will come) and yapacağım (I will do) but say gelicem and yapıcam, with e moving toward i, a toward ı, and the ğ gone. The letter itself is covered in my lesson on the Turkish alphabet.
In the same Türk Dili article, Yaman lists seven pronunciations of değil: değil, deel, deil, diğil, deyil, diyil, and diil. He classifies diil as a pronunciation problem associated with the narrowing of e toward i. I use diil myself in everyday speech. In the recording below I read five sentences the same way, first as written, then as I speak. The first and last contain değil; the second has the future tense.
Benim suçum değil. (It's not my fault.)
Bugün gelmiyorum, yarın geleceğim. (I'm not coming today, I'll come tomorrow.)
Ne yapıyorsun? Hiçbir şey yapmıyorum, oturuyorum. (What are you doing? Nothing, I'm just sitting.)
Bu akşam yalnız kalacağım. (I'll be alone this evening.)
Oğlum okulda değil, evde. (My son isn't at school, he's at home.)
For a learner, diil in conversation and a careful değil in reading aloud are both safe.
Thirteen ways in Kars
In a 2014 article, the dialectologist Bahadır Güneş examined the texts in Ahmet Bican Ercilasun's Kars İli Ağızları (The Dialects of Kars Province) and found değil 49 times, in 13 written forms: değil, degil, değel, deal, döy, değül, deel, dègil, degül, dèğíl, deil, döğ and döü.
Standard değil was the most frequent, at about half of all cases. Hanak Turkmen speakers favored deal. Terekeme speakers used the widest range, including döy, döğ and döü, which Güneş attributes partly to fast speech dropping the end of the word. A speaker from the Kars Azeri group is recorded saying Menim oğlum değel ("My son is not..."), with menim for benim (my).
Where değil comes from
Değil is the negative counterpart of the Turkish "to be" suffixes, which I explain in The Verb "To Be" in Turkish. Its Old Turkic form is tegül. In his eleventh-century dictionary of Turkic, the Dîvânu Lugâti't-Türk, Kaşgarlı Mahmud wrote that the Argu people had a word dağ meaning "no, not," used in the phrase dağ ol, and that the Oghuz reshaped this phrase into tegül.
In Kaşgarlı Mahmud's account, the word is associated with Argu, while its reshaping is attributed to Oghuz. Later Turkologists proposed other explanations, including täg ol (Annemarie von Gabain) and a lost verb meaning “to be absent” (Talât Tekin). Kaşgarlı's explanation is the earliest recorded among these, but the word's origin remains debated.
Lehçe, şive, ağız
Turks often use three words for regional speech interchangeably. Turkish school textbooks separate them by how long ago a branch split off. A lehçe split off before written records; Yakut (Sakha) and Chuvash are the usual examples. A şive split off later, within written history; Azerbaijani is the textbook example, and Kazakh and Uzbek are often listed too. An ağız is the regional speech of one language, such as the speech of the Black Sea coast or of Muğla, and it can extend across national borders.
The Ministry of Education's ninth-grade textbook gives a sample sentence for each.
Its ağız example comes from the Aegean: Beni bak gıı, n'apıp durun?, which is Bana bak kız, ne yapıyorsun? in standard Turkish ("Look here, girl, what are you doing?").
By these definitions, the popular phrase "Karadeniz şivesi" (Black Sea şive) should be "Karadeniz ağızları" (Black Sea dialects). In everyday Turkish, though, şive is used loosely for any regional way of speaking, and many Turkologists use lehçe for every Turkic language and avoid şive altogether.
What is the difference between an accent and a dialect?
In English, an accent is a difference in pronunciation: two speakers use the same words and grammar but say some sounds differently. A dialect can also differ in vocabulary and grammar. A regional Turkish speaker who uses a different present continuous ending is showing a dialect feature.
The Turkish ağız matches the English "regional dialect," which is why linguists write of Trabzon ağızları and Anadolu ağızları (the dialects of Trabzon and of Anatolia), though English speakers often call them accents. Lehçe and şive have no exact English equivalents.
The Turkic Languages
A guide to the whole Turkic language family, from Turkish and Azerbaijani to Yakut and Chuvash.
Three dialect groups in Anatolia
The classification most Turkish linguists use is Leylâ Karahan's Anadolu Ağızlarının Sınıflandırılması (The Classification of Anatolian Dialects, TDK, 1996). It has three main groups. The Eastern group covers provinces such as Erzurum, Kars, Van, Diyarbakır and Urfa. The Northeastern group is the eastern Black Sea coast, mainly Trabzon and Rize. Everything else is Western, divided into nine subgroups.
In dialect terms, then, Ankara, Konya, Kayseri and Sivas are "Western," and so are Samsun, Ordu and Giresun on the Black Sea. Thrace and the Balkans are classified separately.
One of Karahan's criteria is an old nasal consonant, transcribed ñ, close to the "ng" in English sing; the modern Turkish alphabet has no letter for it. Western dialects keep it: baña (to me), seniñ (your), eviñ (your house). Eastern dialects use a plain n, as Istanbul speech does. On the eastern Black Sea the picture is mixed, and some Trabzon village speech keeps it.
The video below presents several regional Turkish accents, so you can hear some of the differences described in the sections that follow.
A walking verb: where -yor came from
The present continuous ending -yor began as a separate verb, yorı-, "to walk." Old Anatolian Turkish formed the tense with phrases like gele yorur, roughly "goes along coming." Over time -yorur wore down to -yoru, then -yor, and in casual speech, Istanbul included, -yo. The Aegean forms below belong to this line. Other regional forms may have different origins: some Muğla forms use a second verb instead, and the short -y of Trabzon and the western Balkans may go back to an old future ending, -gay/-gey.
My guide to Turkish grammar and sentence logic shows how Turkish stacks endings like this.
Aegean speech: -yo, -yoz and Muğla's twelve present-tense forms
The older -yoru (geliyoru for geliyor) has been recorded in Muğla, Denizli, Aydın, Manisa and Isparta, and inland in Niğde and Nevşehir. In Acıpayam, in Denizli, the most common form is -yô: gidiyôz for gidiyoruz (we're going), biliyôsuñuz for biliyorsunuz (you know). Fethiye has pişiriyoz for pişiriyoruz (we're cooking). In Ayvacık, Çanakkale, the southwest of the district says -yo and the northwest -yoru or -oor.
Muğla province alone has twelve recorded forms of the present tense. Several are built with a second verb: bakı batırın for bakıyorum (I'm looking) in Turgut, near Yatağan; and in Bahçeyaka, gidip-barın for ona gidiyorum (I'm going to her or him), çay demleyipdurun for çay demliyorum (I'm brewing tea) and uğraşıp-duruz for uğraşıyoruz (we're busy with it). The helper verbs go back to var- "to go," yat- "to lie" and dur- "to stand, to stay," which also appears in the textbook sentence above, n'apıp durun?
Many Western dialects turn an initial k into g and t into d. In Ayvacık, kırmızı (red) is gırmızı and taş (stone) is daş; in central Çankırı, kendi (self) is gendi. The textbook's gıı for kız (girl) shows the same change, with the final z dropped as well.
Central Anatolian speech: dā, ōlum and a confusing -yon
Central Anatolian dialects belong to the Western group. Çankırı gives examples district by district. The ñ is heard in baña (Kızılırmak) and deñizde (at sea, central Çankırı).
Where ğ disappears it leaves a long vowel: dā for dağ (mountain) in central Çankırı, ōlum for oğlum (my son) in Korgun, āşam for akşam (evening) in Bayramören and būday for buğday (wheat) in Şabanözü. In Eldivan, final k becomes ḫ, the sound in German Bach: çoḫ for çok (very).
The present tense can confuse learners. In Kızılırmak, gidiyon means "I'm going," and Kurşunlu has gidiyun and gidiyum for the same. In Fethiye, in Muğla, a similar ending -yoñ means "you," as in the local form of kalkıyorsun (you're getting up).
Eastern Black Sea speech: yemiyrum, adami and peklemek
The examples here come from Trabzon. The present tense has a long series of endings, from -ıy and -ay to -yr and -yor, and the "I" ending can have a rounded vowel: yemiyrum for yemiyorum (I'm not eating), unutíyrım for unutuyorum (I'm forgetting).
Suffix vowels often follow their own patterns, in both the front–back and the rounded–unrounded harmony: adami for adamı (the man, as an object), suyini for suyunu (its water). It has been explained as an archaic feature. Some vowels fall between o and ö or between u and ü, as in the local pronunciation of güneş (sun).
Initial b and d become p and t: peklemek for beklemek (to wait), tökmek for dökmek (to pour). An Ottoman grammar of 1889 already gave these two words as examples from the coast around Lazistan. Trabzon speech also uses idi, the past form of "to be," as a separate word placed before the noun: ha burda idi çamlar, "the pines were right here."
The origin of these features is debated. One view traces Trabzon Turkish to a Greek-speaking population shifting to Turkish; another sees a Kipchak Turkish base with Old Anatolian Turkish on top.
Eastern Anatolian speech: aḫşam, gardaş and gelirem
In Erzurum, k often becomes ḫ: aḫşam for akşam (evening), yaḫın for yakın (near), ayaḫ for ayak (foot), çubuḫ for çubuk (stick). Van has yoḫ for yok (there isn't), and ḫ is considered the characteristic consonant of the Eastern group. At the start of a word, k often becomes g or ġ: gişi for kişi (person) and ġaz for kaz (goose) in Erzurum, gardaş for kardeş (sibling) in Van.
Erzurum speech has sentences like ben birezden gelirem (I'll be back in a little while) and neydecem bülmirem (I don't know what I'll do). Both verbs end in -em for "I," where standard Turkish has -im or -um, and bülmirem (standard bilmiyorum) uses an -ir present also found in Van, as in olir and baḫirler. Bana (to me) is bene. Azerbaijani influence is strongest in Kars and weakens westward toward a line from Samsun through Sivas to İskenderun, which is the background to the Kars Azeri Menim oğlum değel.
Southeastern dialects: Gaziantep's gelicim
Most of Urfa belongs to the Eastern group, while Halfeti and Birecik in Urfa, and the Çepni speech of Gaziantep, are classed as Western.
Where standard Turkish says geleceğim, geleceksin, gelecek, Gaziantep texts have gelicim, geliciñ, gelici. The ending comes from an old participle and is found in an arc from Gaziantep through Çukurova (Hatay, Adana, Osmaniye) and Kahramanmaraş to Kırşehir.
The same texts have mehmet eve gelik (Mehmet has come home, it seems) for gelmiş; biz eve gelirik (we come home) for geliriz; bundarı for bunları (these, as an object) in Barak Turkmen speech; and alıy for alıyor, with -(I)y as the main present-tense ending.
In central Urfa, ḫ appears again in aḫardı for akardı (it used to flow), and some loanwords have different vowels: amanat for emanet (something entrusted to you), from Arabic, and barabar for beraber (together), from Persian. My piece on Turkish loan words traces where some everyday words came from.
Rumeli dialects: Turkish in the Balkans
Balkan Turkish dialects are usually divided along a line through Lom and Samokov in Bulgaria. East Rumelian includes Edirne, Deliorman, the East Rhodopes and eastern Bulgaria, and usually Western Thrace in Greece; Edirne speech shares most of its features with standard Turkish. West Rumelian covers North Macedonia, Kosovo and the other former Yugoslav areas, and its differences from standard Turkish are larger.
In West Rumelian, the present tense ends in -y: sevey for seviyor (loves), geliy for geliyor (is coming). Final ı, u and ü become i: buldi for buldu (found), ogli for oğlu (his or her son). In some suffixes a front i becomes ı: benım for benim (my), verdım for verdim (I gave). Before front vowels, k and g can become ç and c: çüpri for köprü (bridge), cüz for göz (eye), and in Kosovo çeçi for keçi (goat).
Word order shifts too. In Kosovo the verb can come before its complement, as in cideym eve ("I'm going home") and nice celdın bu havada? ("how did you come in this weather?"), an order linked to contact with Serbian, Bulgarian, Greek and Albanian.
So which Turkish should you learn?
Learn the standard. It is the Turkish of the news and of most books, and it is understood in Trabzon and Antep alike. Recognizing regional forms is a listening skill.
Two habits help. Listen for the dropped r in -yor: geliyo and yapıyo are normal in casual standard speech. When a vowel or a k sounds unfamiliar, try the standard word: aḫşam is akşam, yoḫ is yok, gardaş is kardeş, dā is dağ.
If you want to practice listening with a teacher, you can book a lesson, and How to Learn Turkish lays out the bigger plan.
Vocabulary
ağız – regional dialect (literally "mouth")
şive – in everyday Turkish, a regional accent or way of speaking; in textbooks, a branch of Turkic that split off in written times
lehçe – a major branch of Turkic; in everyday speech, "dialect"
telaffuz – pronunciation
söyleyiş – way of saying something
değil – not (the negative of "to be")
memleket – hometown, home region
yöre – locality, area
şimdiki zaman – the present continuous tense
yumuşak g – the soft g, written ğ
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
Q: Is diil the correct pronunciation of değil?
A: Diil, with a long i, is common in everyday speech, and I use it myself. The word is always written değil. In an article published in TDK's journal Türk Dili, Yaman considers diil a pronunciation problem. More careful pronunciations may be preferred in formal speech.
Q: Is Black Sea Turkish a separate language?
A: Black Sea Turkish refers to regional varieties (ağızlar) of Turkish. Speech differs across the region, with local features such as yemiyrum for standard Turkish yemiyorum (“I'm not eating”) recorded in Trabzon.
Q: Can Turkish speakers from different regions understand each other?
A: Generally, yes. Most speakers can communicate across regional differences, especially when using standard Turkish. Strongly local speech, particularly among older rural speakers, may take some getting used to.
Sources
Demirel & Aydın (2025), Uluslararası Türkçe Edebiyat Kültür Eğitim Dergisi 14(3)
Ertuğrul Yaman, "Türkiye Türkçesinde Güncel Söyleyiş Sorunları ve Dil Yanlışları," Türk Dili
Türk Dili ve Edebiyatı 9 (Ministry of National Education textbook), Unit 1, p. 16
Mehmet Kaynak (2020), "Türkiye Türkçesi Ağızları Üzerine," Kafdağı 5(2)
A. Mevhibe Coşar (2008), Trabzon ağızları, Turkish Studies 3/3
A. Mevhibe Coşar (2015), Karadeniz Araştırmaları Enstitüsü Dergisi (KAREN) 1/1
Funda Kara (2006), "İki Masalda Van Ağzının Genel Ses Özellikleri-1," TDAY Belleten 2006-II
Meltem Gül (2013), "İran (Azerbaycan) Ağızlarında Belirtme Durum Ekleri," İdil 2(8)
Ahmet Günşen (2009), Gaziantep ağzı şekil bilgisi, Turkish Studies 4/3
Sabir & Al-Saqee (2024), Kirkuk University Journal for Humanities 19/2
Ahmet Günşen (2010), Rumeli ağızlarının söz dizimi üzerine, Turkish Studies 5/1
Wow! This post is so fascinating! It never ceases to amaze me how rich and diverse Turkish is as a language. Your research, in depth as always, really intrigued the inner linguist inside of me. Thanks for sharing. Have a nice day. Iyi geceler. Sagol!
This is a lovely panorama, makes me feel better. People who visit my homeland complain about the same things: Tennessee, Chicago, Maine, Los Angeles all have different pronunciation, sometimes bordering on dialect. I lived awhile in London, visited Ireland, Scotland and encountered the same problem, although we all spoke English. To this day, I cannot understand the people in Glasgow when they speak their local twang. Long live local color!!