This page is the site’s masthead. It names the company behind the site, explains how the pages are written and checked, lists what is never done here and states why the site exists. The relationship with the official Turkish e-Apostil system has its own page; here it is mentioned only in passing.
Who runs the site
This site is operated by Hacettepe Tercüme Ltd. Şti., a translation office registered in Ankara, Türkiye. Its trade registry details, MERSİS number (the identifier of the Turkish central registry), postal address and correspondence channels are on the contact details page. Editorial responsibility for every page rests with that company. Writers, source-checking tools and proofreaders may change; the responsibility does not.
Relationship with the official system
The official electronic apostille system of Türkiye is called e-Apostil and runs at www.eapostil.gov.tr. This site has no contract, authorisation or connection with that system, with PTT (the national postal operator that handles e-Apostil applications) or with any public body. The similarity of the domain name and the measures taken because of it are explained on a separate page; the notice at the top of every page leads there.
How the content is produced
Pages are written from primary sources rather than from second-hand summaries: the text of the legislation, the Turkish Official Gazette, the announcement of the authority concerned, and the tables published by the Hague Conference on Private International Law (HCCH). Where a page states a rule, the legal basis is named with its article, and the sources are listed with their links. Every page carries a verification date: on that date the sources were read again and the text was reviewed against them. Status information on country pages (whether the state is party to the Convention, entry into force, competent authority) is not typed into the text by hand; it is printed from country data taken from the HCCH table, together with the date it was taken. When a country’s status changes, one data row is updated and every page that mentions that country changes with it.
The limit of this method should be stated just as plainly. Where no official source could be found for a rule, the page says so in those words rather than hiding the gap. The reading of the sources is the reading of a translation office; it is not legal advice, and the practice of the authority that will receive the document always comes first.
Reporting an error
Legislation changes, authorities change their practice, tables are updated. If a page contains outdated or wrong information, an email to the address on the contact page with the page address and a note of what is wrong is enough. The report is checked against the source; if it holds, the page is corrected and its verification date renewed. The person who reports an error is never named on the site.
What is not done here
- No apostille, legalisation or notary certification is issued; only the competent authority and the notary do that.
- No official application is taken, forwarded or tracked; no form on this site asks for e-Devlet login details or an identity number.
- Official fees are not quoted as amounts; the reader is pointed to the page of the authority that sets them.
- The application procedure of a foreign institution (visa, recognition of qualifications, admission) is not described; the subject of this site is the certification chain of the document.
- No legal advice is given and no assurance is offered that a document will be accepted.
Why the site exists commercially
The site is not a public service and does not try to look like one. Its reason to exist is simple: at one link of the certification chain the document has to be translated, and the office that runs the site does that translation. Each page ends with a section on where translation fits in the chain and with a way to request a quote. The information pages are not narrowed so that translation gets sold: the cases where no translation is needed (multilingual extracts, exemption treaties) are written with the same clarity, because a translation made in the wrong order wastes the reader’s money and time. No quote is given without seeing the document; the price, the scope and the time frame are in the quote itself.