In Lithuania the apostille has been a notary’s task since 2016; the single exception concerns documents coming from Lithuania’s own diplomatic missions, for which the Consular Department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs is competent. No electronic apostille is recorded. For a Turkish document two exemption details decide the file: a multilingual civil status form passes in Lithuania without an apostille, but Lithuania has not acceded to the 1968 European Convention, so consular documents have no exemption. This page sets out those differences.
18 January 2016: the day Lithuanian notaries took over apostilles
According to the HCCH authority page (17 November 2022), apostilles in Lithuania have been placed by notaries since 18 January 2016; the contact point is the Lithuanian Chamber of Notaries. Estonia had moved to the same model six years earlier, France followed in 2025. There is no division of competence by document type. A Lithuanian document whose apostille bears a notary’s signature is therefore the normal case, and a Turkish institution should not mistake it for a notarial certification and look for a further apostille. The HCCH page lists two separate fee lines without saying which procedure each belongs to; no amount is written on this site.
Documents from Lithuanian missions go to the Consular Department
The one exception to the notarial rule concerns documents sent by Lithuanian diplomatic missions and consular posts: for those the Consular Department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs is competent. The exception concerns a Turkish document holder in one situation: a person who has an act performed at the Lithuanian mission in Türkiye and will use the document in Lithuania should know that the certificate will come from the Consular Department, not from a notary. How the document reaches that department and how long the procedure takes is not stated on the HCCH page and was not found in this site’s survey.
Absent from the e-APP chart: no known register for Lithuanian apostilles
The HCCH e-APP chart of 13 August 2026 has no row for Lithuania; no electronic apostille or online register has been notified to the HCCH. That the two neighbouring Baltic states, Estonia and Latvia, have rows in the chart does not mean Lithuania has the same service; the three states notify separately, and Lithuania has not.
CIEC 16 since 29 January 2010: Turkish forms without an apostille in Lithuania
CIEC Convention 16 has applied to Lithuania since 29 January 2010. A birth, marriage or death extract issued in multilingual form (Formül A, B or C) by a Turkish nüfus müdürlüğü, the civil registry office, needs no apostille before a Lithuanian authority, which itself decides whether to ask for a translation. Civil registry documents outside the forms take an apostille. Lithuania has not acceded to CIEC 17, so a single-status or residence certificate presented for a marriage enjoys no legalisation exemption. EU Regulation 2016/1191 works between Lithuania and the other Member States; a Turkish document is outside it, and a Turkish citizen in Lithuania should not present an unapostilled document in reliance on that regulation.
Consular documents between Lithuania and Türkiye without a 1968 shortcut
In the Council of Europe table Lithuania is absent from the list of states that have ratified ETS 063. Between Türkiye and Lithuania there is accordingly no legalisation exemption for consular documents. The Apostille Convention, for its part, excludes documents executed by diplomatic agents or consular officers. How a document drawn up at the Turkish mission in Lithuania is to be certified before a Lithuanian authority is therefore settled by neither convention; what the Lithuanian authority expects was not verified on this site and is asked of the receiving institution. The same uncertainty exists in the other direction, for a document drawn up at the Lithuanian mission in Türkiye.
The Bangladesh objection, the 1997 date and translation for Lithuania
Lithuania acceded on 5 November 1996; its HCCH row shows 19 July 1997 and Türkiye raised no objection. Lithuania is among the states that objected to the accession of Bangladesh; a Bangladeshi document cannot be used in Lithuania with an apostille. A file between Türkiye and Lithuania is untouched by that objection. Before a Turkish notary a Lithuanian document meets one more rule: the Union of Turkish Notaries (TNB) tells Turkish notaries in its Consolidated Circular 25 that, because of a bilateral agreement, no certification annotation, apostille or consular legalisation, is to be looked for on documents drawn up, issued or certified by the competent Lithuanian authorities under an official seal, nor on certified copies of them. The circular addresses notaries; what another Turkish office asks for is not decided by it. Translation: a Lithuanian document is presented in Türkiye with a Turkish translation certified by a notary, and whether the notary’s apostille is translated with it depends on what the receiving Turkish office asks for. For a Turkish document bound for Lithuania, the language and place of translation are learned from the receiving institution, and a notarised translation made in Türkiye receives its own apostille. A translation office renders the text; it places no certificate.