Documents downloaded from e-Devlet, the Turkish e-government portal, can be verified inside Türkiye through their barcode or QR code. Abroad the position is different. An apostille certifies the signature of a public official, and a plain printout has no handwritten signature on it to certify. A foreign office that receives such a printout is holding a document that Turkish authorities themselves would not apostille on paper.
The rule at the district office
The official page of the Onikişubat kaymakamlık, the district governor’s office, states that a paper e-Devlet printout carrying only a barcode or QR code does not receive a paper apostille directly. The Develi District Governor’s Office adds that it does not certify criminal records obtained from e-Devlet or from the public prosecutor’s office. A printout of this kind presented on its own at the district office counter therefore does not get past the start of the application.
First route: e-Apostil
An electronic route exists for six document types: the criminal record extract, the court judgment, the civil registry extract and the multilingual birth, marriage and death extracts (Formül A, B and C). The application is made by the holder from their own e-Devlet account through e-Apostil, the official Turkish electronic apostille system; the document is signed with the qualified electronic certificate of PTT, the national postal operator, and delivered electronically. For the residence certificate and the name equivalence certificate the system’s page says that work is still in progress, so those two are not yet covered.
Second route: the issuing office’s handwritten certification
Where a paper apostille is needed for an e-Devlet document outside the e-Apostil list, the office that issued the document can physically certify the e-signed printout with the name, surname, title, handwritten signature and seal of its official. The district office then apostilles that official’s handwritten signature and capacity, not the barcode. A certified true copy (aslı gibidir) made by a notary is the other route mentioned on official pages; the apostille is then placed on the notary’s signature and is issued by the governor or district governor.
Which route for which country
An electronic apostille is not issued for countries outside the Apostille Convention; a document going to such a country passes through the consular legalisation chain and has to be on paper. For countries within the Convention, the Hague Conference has announced that a validly issued electronic apostille cannot be refused simply because it is electronic. Even so, the receiving office should be asked beforehand in which form it takes the electronic file, since a printout of an electronic apostille cannot be checked on paper.
How verification works
A foreign authority that receives an electronically apostilled Turkish document checks the signature by uploading the file on the document verification page of eapostil.gov.tr; there is no lookup by number on that page. Paper apostilles issued by the provincial and district governor’s offices are checked instead on the apostille verification page of e-İçişleri, the Ministry of Interior’s online system, using the serial number, the verification code and the date of certification. The two verification routes are not interchangeable, and for a paper apostille issued by a judicial commission this site’s survey found no online verification page.
The short answer for the barcode printout
A barcode printout may be enough inside Türkiye; it is not enough abroad. For the six covered documents the route is e-Apostil; for everything else it is the handwritten certification of the issuing office or of a notary, followed by a paper apostille. Where a translation is needed as well, the translation is made from the certified document by a sworn translator, certified by a notary and apostilled on that certification.