Expressing Desire: -mek/-mak istemek ("to want to…")

İstemek means “to want,” and pairing it with an infinitive is how Turkish expresses wanting to do something rather than wanting a thing. The pattern is simple as long as one condition holds: the person who wants and the person who acts have to be the same person. The moment they aren’t, the whole construction changes shape.

What this construction does

İstemek takes a direct object like any other verb — bir çay istiyorum (“I want a tea”) — but pair it with an infinitive ending in -mek/-mak and it expresses wanting to perform an action:

• Gitmek istiyorum. — I want to go.
• Dinlenmek istiyor. — He/she wants to rest.
• Öğrenmek istiyoruz. — We want to learn.

The infinitive names the action; istemek, conjugated for whoever wants it, supplies the person.

Forming it

The infinitive suffix -mek/-mak harmonizes two ways, based on the verb stem’s last vowel — the same back/front split as the plural suffix:

• git- (go, front i) → gitmek — go
• yap- (do, back a) → yapmak — do
• gel- (come, front e) → gelmek — come
• oku- (read, back u) → okumak — read

İstemek itself then conjugates exactly like any other verb in the present continuous — the same -(i)yor pattern covered earlier — across all six persons:

• (Ben) okumak istiyorum. — I want to read.
• (Sen) okumak istiyorsun. — You want to read.
• (O) okumak istiyor. — He/she wants to read.
• (Biz) okumak istiyoruz. — We want to read.
• (Siz) okumak istiyorsunuz. — You (plural/formal) want to read.
• (Onlar) okumak istiyorlar. — They want to read.

Exceptions worth knowing

Negation goes on istemek, not on the infinitive. Gitmek istemiyorum (“I don’t want to go”) is the standard way to say you lack the desire to go — the negative -mi- sits on istemek, and the infinitive gitmek stays exactly as it is. Moving the negative onto the infinitive instead — gitmemek istiyorum — is grammatical but means something different and much rarer: “I want to not go,” actively wanting to avoid going, rather than simply not wanting to go.

When the wanter and the doer are different people, the bare infinitive can’t be used at all. -Mek/-mak names an action with no subject slot of its own, so it only works when that action’s doer is the same person as the one who wants it. To want someone else to do something, Turkish nominalizes the action instead: take the light infinitive -me/-ma, attach the possessive suffix for whoever does the action (the same suffixes covered in the previous lesson), add the accusative -i, and that whole phrase becomes the object of istemek:

• Senin gitmeni istiyorum. — I want you to go. (literally, “I want your going”)
• Onun gelmesini istiyorum. — I want him/her to come.
• Bizim katılmamızı istiyor. — He/she wants us to join.

A plain noun object works too, with no infinitive at all, whenever what’s wanted is a thing rather than an action: Bir su istiyorum (“I want some water”) never needs a verb.

Examples

• Sinemaya gitmek istiyorum ama param yok. — I want to go to the cinema, but I don’t have money.
• Bu akşam evde kalmak istiyor musun? — Do you want to stay home tonight?
• Öğretmen olmak istiyorum. — I want to become a teacher.
• Senin bize katılmanı istiyoruz. — We want you to join us.
• Çocuklar dışarı çıkmak istiyor. — The children want to go outside.
• Erken kalkmak istemiyorum. — I don’t want to get up early.

The fourth example is the different-subject pattern in action: biz (we) want something, but the one doing the joining is sen (you) — so katılmak nominalizes into katılmanı rather than staying a bare infinitive.

Try it yourself

Babi, Speafy’s AI tutor, will push you past the easy same-subject sentences into the different-subject ones — swapping gitmek istiyorum for senin gitmeni istiyorum until reaching for the possessive suffix on a verb feels as natural as reaching for it on a noun — and Speafy’s FSRS-based flashcards keep that same-subject/different-subject line from blurring back together over time.