I´m still a beginner with Turkish and wondering if present tense is the easiest to learn first?

What tenses do I really need to learn? 

I´m how to start with grammar first?

Most books and courses start learning the tenses with present continuous tense (iyor/uyor), then go to past tense (di/du), then future (acak/ecek), then simple present/aorist (er/ir), and eventually reported past tense (miş/muş).

Understanding Turkish vowel harmony is very important in picking the correct tense suffixes to add to the root verb. Then you will learn basic structures for all 6 personal endings (ben, sen, o, biz, siz, onlar)

With each of these, once you understand the rules and correct vowel harmony for the verb, you will then learn the negative version, the question version, and negative question version.

You really need to learn all the tenses if you want to understand and use Turkish correctly. How much you need to learn depends on what you want to achieve. Common greetings will be enough for tourist needs in the major tourist areas, but for travellers who want to visit rural areas, you need more.

If you have Turkish friends, the more you know, the more you will be able to understand their conversations.

I found future tense (acak/ecek) the easiest to learn the rules for, as the vowel harmony was the same as that used by plurals (lar/ler).

Good luck with your learning.

Unusual question Claire  If you´re asking how to start learning Turkish grammar, then I suggest learning Turkish vowels and vowel harmony.

Then learn about plurals (lar/ler). Note that with Turkish plurals, unlike English, once you start with a number, you don´t add a plural suffix.

Yedi kedi = 7 cats, kediler = cats

Also whenever you start with a modifier (çok, fazla, az, kaç, birçok) you also don´t add lar/ler to the noun.

çok kedi var = there are a lot of cats

Note that there are also a few exceptions for vowel harmony rules, most from words rooted in other languages.

Saat --- saatler (hours/watches)

kalp --- kalpler (hearts)

Learn about this and that, bu/şu/o and how the Turks distinguish between them, depending on the distance away. This difference is always useful while shopping in Turkey.

Bunlar, şunlar and onlar are the plural versions (these/those).