I am a true beginner, i have actually picked up a pretty big vocabulary but as far as anything else I'm not real sure what direction to go. I cant even put a sentence together, i'm not a real easy learner any tips for what are maybe the first few things you MUST learn, or like what order you should learn things... am i making sense? :-S

look at the sentence orders first then look at simple conversations with just words from the dictionary (directly....like gitmek=to go) then learn the correct endings, thats how im attempting it anyway hehe (people understand me even if its nots correct)u only learn from your mistakes

im trying to teach myself aswell so thats maybe its taking so long why im not getting as far as id like to hehe

First thing learn vowel harmony,and understand it very well.
Then understand that we form anything in Turkish by adding suffix,
Tenses,pural,nagative,...ect
Then try to get the sentence order,a tip for a biginner is that mostly all of the time,the verb comes last thing in the sentence
Ex,
İ am going to work.
İşe gidiyorum ..... 'to work,i'm going'

Then read if you can and try to practice,and anything you need,come here and ask,you will find lots of help.
Start with the learn Turkish section here,its very good.

Download Winmekmak,it will help you,and there are some other sites teaching grammar is very good too

Best of luck

o o o i also find learning lyrics to songs is quite helpful because they are memorable and help with orders and endings and pronunciation hehe...plus i just love them lol

First learn Vowel Harmony (Very very important you cannot go on if you do not get this!)
Then the compliment to be and the personal endings :
im/ sin / dir ---etc
then the basic suffixes like "de/den/ile" etc
The consonant mutation...
This order worked for me ,
iyi şanslar dilerim! ( I wısh you good luck)
Kolay gelsin!
If you need help anyone here wıll love to help you (me too!)
and NEVER GIVE UP because...
You CAN learn turkısh!
Dilara.

I think the reason people sometimes find it hard is because turkish is slightly backwards to the english language.

For example: I love you = seni seviyorum...but 'seni' = you and 'seviyorum' = I love. but also as a single word 'sen' = you...but ya sen? = and you? and so on. Hence you need to learn vowel harmony first.

It may be hard to learn at first but i'm sure you'll get use to it....good luck!

I am also trying to learn and did not know where to start. These tips are really helpful. The people on this site are so nice and helpful

Wow.. you are all very nice! Thank you! I am truly a beginner as well... slowly learning. I think I have the vowel harmony down.. I have found the turkish language to be very beautiful.