The order of the steps is one place where a certification chain can break: the translation may be made before the apostille, the notary may be asked before the translation exists, or an apostilled document may be carried to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. This checker takes the steps you have done or plan to do, in the order you place them, and names the rule that the order breaks. It is meant for the person running the chain alone and for the clerk checking the order a client brings in.
Seven step types, seven rules
Five empty slots are offered; each takes one of seven step types: translation, notary certification of the translation, apostille on the original, apostille on the notary certification, e-Apostil, certification at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, legalisation at a mission. The rules are these. At least two steps must be chosen and no step may appear twice. Notary certification cannot precede the translation, since the notary certifies the translator’s signature and that signature must exist first. An apostille on the notary certification cannot appear without, or before, that certification. A translation placed after the apostille on the certification leaves the apostille page untranslated and the certification outside the apostille. Once any apostille step is present, a Ministry of Foreign Affairs certification cannot follow it, because the Ministry does not certify apostilled documents. Mission legalisation and an apostille never share a chain: a party country takes the apostille, a non-party country the consular chain.
Gaps the checker leaves on purpose
It does not know the document or the country, so it measures only the internal consistency of the steps, not whether an apostille is the right road at all. It does not treat “translation before apostille on the original” as an error: whether the apostille page must be translated is decided by the receiving authority; the rejection reasons checker covers it. Seeing e-Apostil and a paper apostille in one list is not flagged either, as both are options for the same document. No times, no fees.
Where the rules come from
The legalisation leaflet of the Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs gives the order for a document going abroad as translation, notary certification, governorship or district governorship, then the Ministry, and states that an apostilled document cannot be certified by the Ministry. The Onikişubat district governorship writes that on a notarised translation the element covered by the apostille is the notary’s signature and capacity. That the original of a judicial document and its notarised translation are apostilled by two different authorities appears on the Onikişubat page; the Zile page draws the same split for a university diploma, with the governorship on the original and the district governorship on the notarised translation. Since 2024 the apostille on a notarial act is issued by any governorship or district governorship under article 199 of the Notaries Law; the former requirement to go where the notary sits no longer applies.
After a clean sequence
When the checker reports a consistent order, that is internal consistency only; the rule of the authority receiving the document still decides. The place of the translation depends on the chain: on the apostille road the apostilled document is translated into the target language and certified by a notary, and the receiving authority says whether the apostille page is part of the translation; in the legalisation chain the translation is the first link and every later certification is built on its notary certification. The steps you enter vanish when you leave the page; nothing is sent to a server.