Turkish: A Comprehensive Grammar

ister…ister can occur with olsun…olsun:
Turkish: A comprehensive grammar 446
(49) İster büyük olsun, ister küçük (olsun), evlerin sorunları bitmiyor.
‘Whether big or small, houses always have problems.’
(iii) ha…ha and ama…ama are both colloquial conjunctions which precede the
constituents they conjoin:
(50) Ha Boğaziçi’ne gitmişsin ha Bilkent’e. İkisi de iyi üniversite.
‘It doesn’t matter whether you go to Boğaziçi or to Bilkent. They are both good
universities.’
(51) Bu tip fırınlard a genellikle ızgara olmuyor, ama yerli ama yabancı.
‘Whether they are made in Turkey (lit. locally) or imported, these ovens don’t
usually have grills.’
28.3.4 ADVERSATIVE
Adversative conjunctions signal a turning of the discourse in a direction contrary to what
has been previously established.
28.3.4.1 ama, fakat, ancak, yalnız ‘but’
Fakat and ama are interchangeable. They conjoin clauses whose combined content
expresses some kind of conflict or contradiction:
(52) Semra hep gezmek istiyor ama/fakat zamanı yok. (Conflict)
‘Semra always wants to travel, but she doesn’t have the time.’
(53) Sonbahar geldi ama/fakat ağaçlar hâlâ yeşil. (Contradiction)
‘Autumn is here, but the trees are still green.’
When ama is used as a discourse connective, in other words when the second conjunct is
uttered as a separate statement from the first, ama can also be placed at the end of the
second conjunct:
(54) Kitabı hevesle satın aldım. Okuyamadım ama.
‘I bought the book with great enthusiasm. I haven’t managed to read it, though’
Ama and fakat can also conjoin adjectival construction:
(55) Sıcak ama [bunaltıcı olmayan] bir havası var Ankara’nın.
The weather in Ankara is hot but not suffocating.’
(lit. ‘Ankara has a hot but not suffocating climate.’)
ancak and yalnız (which as adverbials mean ‘only’ (16.7)) are slightly more restricted in
their occurrence as adversative connectives than ama or fakat. They are used mainly to
introduce a sentence expressing inability, failure, obligation, or some other
disadvantageous situation: