How does Turkish handle addressing something like ‘the police’ in sentence structure? (without using anything similar to ‘the’)

e.g. ‘The police force has expanded recently in this city.’

‘Police force has expanded recently in this city.’

Nothing. "Polis (police), son (latest) zamanlarda (times, at) bu (this) şehirde (city, within) faaliyetlerini (operations) arttırdı (increased)."

If I'm talking about a specific police officer, then I'd use "o", which means he/she/it/that.

O geldi -> he/she/it/that arrived.

O polis geldi -> that police arrived.

Ona polis geldi -> police arrived to him/her (his/her place).

polis geldi -> the police (has) arrived.

O bahsettiğin polis geldi -> The police officer you were talking about (has) arrived.

How do you differentiate between the abstract concept of police, the concept of police forces as an organizational unit, and the specific police force that exists within a specific city?

If I understood you correctly, you just name them. The default is the concept, and most of the time people do not feel the need to separate some specific police force, because it's apparent from the context. Some specific police force aren't likely to expand their operations in the city.

On the other hand, I think I may also be failing to explain this correctly because we are already at the limits of my English :)

Thanks, but you don’t need to explain how if you’re unsure.

If you can just write one example in Turkish, of each case, so three total, most readers can probably puzzle it out with enough time using translation tools.

Abstract Concept of Police (e.g., law enforcement in general):

> Polis, toplumun güvenliğini sağlamakla görevlidir.

> (Police are responsible for maintaining public safety.)

Police Force as an Organizational Unit:

> Bu şehirdeki polis teşkilatı faaliyetlerini arttırdı.

> (The police force in this city has expanded its operations.)

Specific Police Force Within a Specific City:

> İstanbul polisi son zamanlarda çok aktif.

> (The Istanbul police have been very active lately.)

> Bu şehirdeki polis teşkilatı faaliyetlerini arttırdı.

Interestingly the -ki suffix here was borrowed from Persian (another Indo-European language like English), and effectively highlights a unique instance - "the one which" - in a way that Turkish otherwise doesn't specifically do.

No, the Persian ki is the conjunction (Polis teşkilatı faaliyetlerini arttırdı ki, hırsızlık azalsın), not the possessive suffix (-ki).

Sources: Me being a native speaker and also: Turkish Grammar (Oxford 2nd ed. 2001), Geoffrey Lewis. Pages 69 and 211 (Just checked to be sure).

(Note: not a Turkish speaker, but the other language without the articles)

You don't need most of the time because it's evident from the context without any ambiguity.

You also need to know what English is quite lacking in the declension and inflection departments which do the heavy lifting in the other languages and often eliminate the need for a separate article words.

Ah, yes, many languages do not need to specifically distinguish between 'police' and 'police force'.

Turkish, in comparison to English, is a language that is less lexically dense. So in this instance; you don't really need to specify anything; but that also means a lot of sentences _get longer due to said lack of lexical density requiring more words to be used, for clarity's sake and / or heavier reliance on context_. Which follows the cultural lines quite well - Turkish culture is a _high context culture_ whereas English culture is not (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-context_and_low-context_c...).

The high-context culture would seem to be an adaption to the lower lexical density, if that’s the case?

e.g. to save on space, paper, writing effort, etc…, Turkish writers have to rely on the reader reading in-between the lines to a greater extent than a similar English writer would in a similar position.

And after many generations of writers competing, it simply became the default norm.

Hypothetically it could be; but it is anyone’s guess frankly.

Most likely it is multi variate in the end; as it is quite a broad thing.

Five different "the"s, three different "of"s, two different "from"s, six different "a"s.