Turkish Postpositions: İle, İçin, Kadar, Göre, Sonra & Önce

English puts small words such as for, with, like, until and after before a noun: they are prepositions. Turkish puts the equivalent words after the noun, so they are called postpositions (edatlar or ilgeçler). Most of them also require the noun in front to carry a specific case ending, so learning a postposition really means learning a pair: the word plus its case. This guide groups the common postpositions by the case they govern, shows how pronouns behave with them, and covers the most frequent mistakes.

How postpositions work

noun (+ case) + postposition

• çocuklar için — for the children (no case ending)
• akşama kadar — until the evening (dative -a)
• dersten sonra — after class (ablative -ten)

The postposition itself never changes. All the work happens on the noun before it, so you need the noun cases to use postpositions confidently.

Group 1: nominative (genitive with singular pronouns)

The pronoun rule

With these four postpositions, singular pronouns and biz/siz take the genitive, but onlar does not:

The demonstratives and kim behave like o: bunun için (for this, that’s why), şunun gibi (like that one), kiminle (with whom).

İle in more detail

İle can be written as a separate word or attached as a suffix with 2-way harmony and buffer y after vowels: tren ile → trenle (by train), araba ile → arabayla (by car), kalem ile → kalemle (with a pen). It also links two nouns as “and”: Ali ile Ayşe (Ali and Ayşe). The suffix form is covered fully on the instrumental case page.

İçin with verbs

İçin after an infinitive means “in order to”: Türkçe öğrenmek için (in order to learn Turkish). After -dığı it means “because”: Hasta olduğum için gelmedim. (I didn’t come because I was ill.) See verbal nouns for these forms.

Group 2: dative (-a / -e)

Notice that kadar changes meaning with the case: senin kadar = “as … as you”, but sana kadar = “up to you / as far as you”. Compare:

• Ali senin kadar uzun. — Ali is as tall as you.
• Bu yol köye kadar gidiyor. — This road goes as far as the village.

Göre has three common uses: opinion (bana göre — in my view), source (habere göre — according to the news) and suitability (yaşına göre — for his/her age). Doğru can also be temporal: sabaha doğru (towards morning). For the case itself, see the dative case.

Group 3: ablative (-dan / -den)

The ablative takes the form -tan/-ten after voiceless consonants (dersten, sabahtan). See the ablative case.

Sonra and önce with amounts of time

When sonra or önce follows an amount of time, the noun stays bare: iki gün sonra (two days later), üç yıl önce (three years ago), bir saat sonra (an hour later). With verbs, use -dikten sonra and -meden önce: see time clauses.

Location words: postpositional nouns

Words like üst (top), alt (bottom), ön (front), arka (back), yan (side), iç (inside) and ara (between) work like postpositions but are really nouns. They take a possessive and a case ending, and the noun before them takes the genitive:

This structure is a possessive compound; see compound nouns and the locative case.

Example sentences

1. Bu hediye senin için. — This present is for you.
2. İşe metroyla gidiyorum. — I go to work by metro.
3. Akşama kadar ofisteyim. — I’m at the office until the evening.
4. Kardeşim benim kadar uzun değil. — My brother isn’t as tall as me.
5. Bana göre bu film çok sıkıcı. — In my opinion this film is very boring.
6. Dersten sonra kahve içelim. — Let’s have a coffee after class.
7. Yemekten önce ellerini yıka. — Wash your hands before the meal.
8. Sabahtan beri yağmur yağıyor. — It’s been raining since the morning.
9. Senden başka kimseyi tanımıyorum. — I don’t know anyone apart from you.
10. Yağmura rağmen maç oynandı. — The match was played despite the rain.
11. Onlarla Antalya’ya gittik. — We went to Antalya with them.
12. Çocuk gibi ağlıyor. — He/She is crying like a child.
13. İki hafta sonra Türkiye’ye taşınıyoruz. — We’re moving to Türkiye in two weeks.
14. Kardan dolayı okullar tatil. — Schools are closed because of the snow.
15. Pazartesiden itibaren yeni fiyatlar geçerli. — The new prices apply from Monday.
16. Kedi kanepenin altında uyuyor. — The cat is sleeping under the sofa.
17. Habere göre yarın kar yağacak. — According to the news, it will snow tomorrow.

Common mistakes

• Putting the word first, English-style: ❌ için sen / ✅ senin için.
• Genitive with onlar: ❌ onların için, onlarınla / ✅ onlar için, onlarla.
• Forgetting the dative with kadar = until: ❌ akşam kadar / ✅ akşama kadar.
• Dative with kadar = as … as: ❌ sana kadar uzun / ✅ senin kadar uzun.
• Forgetting the ablative: ❌ ders sonra / ✅ dersten sonra.
• Adding the ablative to an amount of time: ❌ Üç yıldan önce taşındık. / ✅ Üç yıl önce taşındık. (We moved three years ago.)
• Colloquial short forms in writing: onla and benle are common in speech, but write onunla, benimle.

Mini-exercise

Fill in the correct form.

1. (siz) ___ için → ?
2. (onlar) ___ ile → ?
3. (cuma) ___ kadar (until Friday) → ?
4. (kahvaltı) ___ sonra → ?
5. (o) ___ gibi → ?
6. (ev) ___ doğru → ?
7. (üç ay) ___ önce (three months ago) → ?
8. (soğuk) ___ rağmen → ?

Answers: 1. sizin için 2. onlarla 3. cumaya kadar 4. kahvaltıdan sonra 5. onun gibi 6. eve doğru 7. üç ay önce 8. soğuğa rağmen

Next steps

Review the dative and ablative endings, then paste any long phrase into the suffix deconstructor to see where the case ends and the postposition begins.