Turkish Keyboard

How to type Turkish letters with this keyboard

Pick a layout with the tabs on the keyboard. Turkish Q shows the layout used on almost every computer in Turkey. US keyboard + accents shows a plain US keyboard. In both, there are four ways to type the Turkish letters:

1. Click or tap the buttons above the keyboard, or the keys on the keyboard. Hold Shift while clicking (or press Shift or Caps on the on-screen keyboard first) for capitals. The capitals follow Turkish rules: ı becomes I, and i becomes İ.
2. Alt shortcuts: hold Alt (Option on a Mac) and press C, G, I, O, S or U for ç ğ ı ö ş ü. Add Shift for Ç Ğ Ö Ş Ü, and Alt+Shift+I for the dotted capital İ. Press Alt+I twice for î, Alt+U twice for û, and Alt+A for â. Alt+T types the lira sign ₺.
3. Quick codes: switch on quick codes and type a letter followed by =: c= → ç, g= → ğ, s= → ş, o= → ö, u= → ü. For the i, = toggles the dot: i= → ı and I= → İ. Type a^, i^ or u^ for â î û. They're off by default so that an ordinary = sign stays as typed.
4. Type as on a Turkish keyboard: click Type as if on a Turkish keyboard under the keyboard, and your own keys type like a Turkish Q keyboard: the key right of P gives ğ, the key right of L gives ş, and so on. Shift+3 is the ^ dead key: press it, then a vowel, for â î û. Press Esc to go back to normal typing.

Dotted i and dotless ı: the Turkish I explained

Turkish has two different letter i's, and each has its own capital:

• i and İ (dotted): sounds like the ee in "see", only shorter. The capital keeps its dot: İstanbul, İzmir, İngilizce.
• ı and I (dotless): a sound English doesn't have, close to the a in "about" said with the lips spread. The capital has no dot: Isparta, ılık, kız.

They are not interchangeable. Replacing one with the other gives a different word, or no word at all:

The two letters come from the 1928 alphabet reform, which gave Turkish one letter per sound. Because a plain capital I belongs to ı, a word like istanbul in capitals is İSTANBUL, and ılık is ILIK. Software set to English gets this wrong and writes ISTANBUL, which a Turkish reader sees as a misspelling. It's such a common bug that programmers call it "the Turkish I problem". On this keyboard, Shift and Caps always follow the Turkish rule.

On the Turkish Q layout the letters sit on two keys: the key where English keyboards have I types ı (Shift: I), and the key right of ş types i (Shift: İ). People switching from an English keyboard often type ı by mistake at first.

The Turkish alphabet and how to pronounce it

The Turkish alphabet has 29 letters. It has no Q, W or X, and adds six letters English doesn't have: Ç, Ğ, dotless I ı, Ö, Ş and Ü. The dotted i is the ordinary i, except that its capital keeps the dot (İ). Spelling is very regular: each letter has one sound, so once you know the letters you can read any word aloud.

Two letters surprise English speakers most: c always sounds like the j in "jam" (Cuma, Friday, is "joo-mah"), and ğ is never pronounced as a g. It never starts a word; it makes the vowel before it longer, so dağ (mountain) sounds like "daa" and yağmur (rain) like "yaa-moor".

Â, Î and Û: the circumflex

The circumflex (şapka, "hat") appears mostly in words from Arabic and Persian. It marks a long vowel, or a softer k, g or l before it, and sometimes it's the only thing that tells two words apart: kar (snow) and kâr (profit), hala (aunt) and hâlâ (still). Î is used in adjectives such as millî (national) and askerî (military), and Û in a few words such as mahkûm (convict). Many writers leave the circumflex out, but dictionaries and careful writing keep it.

Turkish characters and Alt codes

For Windows Alt codes, hold Alt and type the number on the number pad, with Num Lock on. The codes for ç ö ü â î û work on any Windows PC. The codes marked "Turkish PC" depend on Windows' language settings: on a PC set up for Turkish they type ğ ı İ ş, while on an English PC the same numbers type ð ý Ý þ. The Unicode code works everywhere in Word: type it, then press Alt+X.

Turkish uses the same quotation marks as English (“ ”), and sometimes « ». An apostrophe separates a suffix from a proper name: İstanbul’da (in Istanbul), Ayşe’nin (Ayşe's). The Turkish lira sign ₺ was introduced in 2012.

The Turkish Q keyboard layout

Nearly all computers in Turkey use Turkish Q. The letters are in the usual QWERTY places, and the Turkish letters sit on the keys English keyboards use for punctuation. This is the Windows layout; the small letter on each key is the US key in the same place, and the blue characters need AltGr (the right Alt key).

• ğ ü are right of P, ş i right of L, and ö ç right of M.
• The I key types dotless ı, and dotted i has its own key right of ş. Shift gives I and İ.
• The key left of 1 types ", with é on Shift. The key right of 0 is * (Shift: ?) and the next one is - (Shift: _).
• Shift + 3 is a dead key for the circumflex: press it, then a, i or u for â î û. Press it and then Space for a plain ^.
• There's an extra key between left Shift and Z for < >, and a , ; key left of Enter.

Many symbols move compared with a US keyboard:

Turkey also has a second layout, Turkish F, named after its first key. It arranges the letters by how often they appear in Turkish and puts the vowels under the left hand. It's an official standard and popular in typing competitions, but far fewer people use it. Turkish Mac keyboards use a Turkish Q layout with the letters in the same places and some symbols elsewhere.

How to add a Turkish keyboard to your computer or phone

Frequently asked questions