When a Turkish company opens a branch abroad, bids in a tender, opens a bank account or signs a contract, it presents documents showing that the company exists and that its representative has authority. Some of these documents receive an apostille and some do not, and the dividing line is not whether the document is commercial, but who drew it up and for what purpose.
Where the commercial exclusion actually bites
The Apostille Convention does not apply to administrative documents dealing directly with commercial or customs operations. The Onikişubat District Governor’s Office reads that rule correctly: a document belonging to a company, or having commercial content, is not on that ground alone outside the scope. What falls outside are documents tied to a customs operation, a certificate of origin or a bill of lading being the typical cases; those receive ordinary legalisation at the provincial governor’s office rather than an apostille, and this site describes them on the certificate of origin page. The articles of association, a resolution of the shareholders or a power of representation given before a notary are documents about the company itself, not about one commercial transaction, and they can be apostilled.
The chain for a certified copy of the articles
The example given by the Nilüfer District Governor’s Office shows the order: the certified copy of the articles of association is translated into the target language by a sworn translator, the translation is certified by a notary, and the provincial or district governor’s office apostilles that notarial certification. The apostille attests the notary’s signature and capacity. If the foreign institution wants a certified copy as well, the copy is first obtained from a notary with a certified-true-copy (aslı gibidir) endorsement and the chain runs on that endorsement.
Trade registry certificates: form set, apostille rule absent
For the registry certificate (sicil tasdiknamesi) issued by the ticaret sicili müdürlüğü, the trade registry office, the Trade Registry Regulation fixes the form: under article 16 it states the MERSİS number, the trade name and the persons authorised to represent the business, and it carries the name of the registry office, the date, the name and signature of the director or deputy director and the registry seal. The registry pages of the Antalya Chamber of Commerce and Industry describe two ways to obtain it: by petition, or through MERSİS as a document signed with the registry official’s secure electronic signature. Article 15/2 adds that the registry’s books and documents may not be taken out of the registry. A rule specific to the apostille of these papers, or of the certificate of activity and an issue of the Turkish Trade Registry Gazette, was not found in the Regulation or on any other official page this site read. Documents issued by professional chambers are treated as administrative documents on district office pages and go to the provincial governor’s office; by the same logic a trade registry document with a handwritten signature and seal would be expected to be apostilled by the governor’s office, but that sentence is an inference, not a quoted rule. Before travelling with the document, the office concerned is asked; for an e-signed printout the registry is asked for a copy with a handwritten signature, since a barcode printout receives no paper apostille.
Who may present a company’s documents
The Convention allows the apostille to be issued at the request of any bearer of the document. District office practice is nevertheless not uniform: the Zile District Governor’s Office wants the person applying on a company’s behalf to carry a company identity card or a letter of authority issued by the company. Whoever presents the documents for the company checks the rule of the chosen office before travelling. For a company document going to a country outside the Convention, the apostille is replaced by legalisation at the governor’s office followed by the Certification Unit of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs; the Unit’s own page sets out its procedure.
Translating corporate documents before the apostille
Where the apostille is placed on the notarised translation, as in the Nilüfer example, the translation comes before the apostille. The company name, share capital, shareholding structure and limits of authority are carried over exactly; the trade registry number and the MERSİS number (the central registry number) are copied as they stand.