This study addresses generic expressions in Turkish, the nominal and verbal morphosyntactic markers involved in their derivations, and the interpretation they give rise to. It is demonstrated that the aorist suffix {-(V)r} is the only true verbal marker of characterizing genericity in that it always introduces GEN into the structure. The nominal predicate marker {-DIr} is shown to be compatible with a characterizing reading if an individual-level predicate is present, but never encodes a generic reading on its own because it is not a GENintroducer. The analysis is demonstrated to account for a number of facts about Turkish generics built on verbal as well as nominal predicates. Overall, in contrast to the argument that all generic expressions are bipartite structures involving reference to kinds, the analysis proposed in this study supports the proposal that statements of characterizing genericity are tripartite structures involving a generic operator

Keywords: genericity; characterizing; kind; habitual; Turkish; classifying; aorist