An Arab woman who had learned some Turkish both from a teacher at the course and from Turkish speakers was furious when a taxi driver called her "ablacım" 'my dear elder sister", she thought the driver's usage of endearment suffix -cım was very inappropriate, too informal and even unrespectful. It is true that when you add -cım to a name it means you are very close to that person (or the person is a child) and a taxi driver who is a stranger and a man isn't expect to call a client especially a woman too casually. But because he uses "abla" which implies respect ablacım isn't inappropriate though it is informal.

If you ask more specific questions I can give more detailed answers. For example which honorifics you study on etc. Feel free to ask more. Kolay gelsin. Selamlar.

There are a lot of subjects to consider about Turkish honorifics, how they are used in traditional/casual language or in official/formal language, how they were involved and how they are used in last 20 years (under the influence of globalisation/Americanisation). These subjects are very much relevant I think, and I don't know what you know about them and what is scope of your study. I think the answer also changes according to the student's mother tongue and background. But as a very short answer, English/Arabic speaking students I met tend to ignore them. In Arabic speakers' case they have a very different honorific system and they can't adopt it to Turkish (as it is very strange to us) and they use names directly which is unacceptable at least traditionally. Once, an Arab student adressed another (Arab) student who is 20 or so years older by her name. I said adressing an older person by name is "ayıp" meaning inappropriate, (as it is originally an Arabic word عيب I assumed she would understand) and I asked her how she would adress her if they were talking in Arabic. She said she would say the mother of (her eldest son) which has no equal in Turkish. Arabic speakers also have difficulty to adopt using second person plural to adress a person politely. Another problem, which may be specific to Arab nations who had been under French rule for awhile in the past (like Syria), they tend to adress a woman as madam which is inappropriate in Turkish. Everybody knows that it is an French honorific for women but It's use is very limited in Turkish and it implies the woman adressed is not a muslim and/or Turk, yet worse it has a secondery meaning which is the mistress of an inappropriate house (similar to the word mistress has a secondery meaning). A small thing, they adress the teacher as either 'teacher" "öğretmen" (which is rude) or 'our teacher' "öğretmenimiz" while a Turkish student says my teacher "öğretmenim". The second one is not inappropriate but sounds funny.

I am a native speaker of Turkish, I'd like to help.

İ am a Turkish learner, living in Turkey. İ didn't remember having a very odd experience using the honorific words but i am also not very comfortable using them. İ saw once a lady getting a bit upset because someone called her "abla". İ usually don't really use them because of that lol i usually just call people by their name. İ tend to use "bey" after the name of older men. With closer friend if i understand correctly you can use kardeş when they are younger and abi when they are older, but it seems it's not that important people have used both with me? İ am not sure about this.