Before any document travels, one fact decides the whole route: is the Apostille Convention in force between Türkiye and the other country? If yes, the document takes an apostille; if not, it takes consular legalisation. This checker settles that fact with a single choice and gives the answer with its date. It serves the person sending a Turkish document abroad as much as the foreign clerk who has just received one.
One input, six possible answers
Only the country is chosen. The result opens with a badge: apostille (Convention in force), apostille soon (the country has joined but the date of entry into force has not arrived), legalisation (not a party), not in force with Türkiye (an objection stands between the two States), exempt by treaty (a bilateral agreement), or not verified. Under the badge come a sentence describing the standing, the date where there is one, the competent authority as listed by the Hague Conference and, where it exists, that authority’s online register. Country-specific notes follow: the 1976 convention on multilingual civil status extracts, the 1977 CIEC convention, the 1968 European convention on consular documents, whether the country issues electronic apostilles, and a warning where a country is a member of the Hague Conference without appearing in the Convention’s table.
What this checker does not say
It knows nothing about the document; which document takes which procedure is the route finder’s job. It cannot tell whether the receiving office will accept the apostilled document, whether it wants a translation, or how recent the document must be. It measures only the relation between Türkiye and the chosen country, never the relation between two other States. The data row of Cyprus says “not verified”: the HCCH table and the two official Turkish lists do not agree, and the checker does not fill that gap with a guess.
Source and date of the data
Country rows are generated from the HCCH status table; the date of its last update is printed under the result. Membership of the Hague Conference and being a party to the Convention are two different things: Egypt, Jordan, Malaysia and Qatar are members and do not appear in the Convention’s table, and the checker flags such cases. A country whose entry into force lies ahead changes status on the server when the date arrives. Additional regimes come from the Council of Europe’s table of ETS 063, the legalisation table of the French Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs, and the document page of the German missions in Türkiye. The exemption of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus rests on a bilateral agreement of 2003.
After the badge
Where the badge reads “apostille”, the authority and the order depend on the document and appear in the route finder; where it reads “legalisation”, the chain runs through a governorship, the legalisation unit of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the destination country’s mission in Türkiye. On both roads the translation is a link of the chain, but in a different place: in the legalisation chain a Turkish document is translated first and every certification is built on the notary’s certification of the translation; on the apostille road, where the certificate is wanted on the original, the translation follows the apostille and is certified by a notary, and the receiving authority decides whether the certificate page is translated; a foreign document needs a Turkish translation by a sworn translator, certified by a notary in Türkiye. The country you pick stays in your browser; nothing is transmitted to this site.