A marriage produces paperwork abroad: a spouse’s residence permit, family reunification, a change of surname, insurance and tax files all want to see that a Turkish authority has recorded the marriage. The nüfus müdürlüğü, the Turkish civil registry office, issues that record in two forms: a single-language marriage extract (evlenme kayıt örneği) and the multilingual Formül B. Which of the two the receiving office should ask for, and whether an apostille is needed at all, depends on the country.
Where Formül B alone is enough
Formül B rests on the CIEC convention of 8 September 1976 on multilingual extracts from civil status records. The convention exempts the extracts from legalisation, and the form is multilingual: the fields are fixed and each heading already has its equivalent in the languages of the convention. Whether a translation is still required is for the receiving authority to say. The German missions in Türkiye say so in plain words: Formül B needs neither a translation nor an apostille in Germany. For a marriage record going to Germany the first question is therefore whether the office is content with Formül B; how often offices are was not measured in this site’s survey.
When Formül B may not be enough
The convention settles part of the content question. Article 2 has the extracts drawn up on the basis of the original entries and the later annotations of the record, and article 5 reserves symbols for marriage, separation, divorce, annulment and death, each followed by its date and place; a divorce recorded after the marriage therefore belongs on the extract under the convention. How the Turkish form is filled in on a given extract, and whether it shows children born later, was not measured on this site. An office that wants the whole history of the marriage, or the whole household, turns to the nüfus kayıt örneği, the full civil registry extract; that document is not multilingual and, in Germany, needs an apostille and a translation by a sworn translator. The aile cüzdanı, the Turkish family record book, does not help either: Germany has not acceded to the 1974 convention on family record books, so the booklet is accepted there only with an apostille and a sworn translation. The receiving office should say in writing which of the three documents it wants before any of them is prepared.
A Turkish marriage record in France
The legalisation table of the French Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs marks civil status documents from Türkiye as exempt from legalisation under the CIEC convention of 1977. A Turkish marriage extract presented to a French mairie or préfecture therefore needs no apostille; the exemption stands in its place. Translation is a separate matter: France expects a foreign public document to be translated by an authorised translator. The convention behind Formül B contains no translation exemption: its article 8 speaks of acceptance without legalisation only. Whether the multilingual form removes the need for a translation at a given French office is therefore that office’s decision.
Two apostille routes for a marriage extract
For a state party to the Apostille Convention that is outside both CIEC conventions, the marriage extract needs an apostille, and there are two ways to obtain one. The extract signed and sealed by the civil registry office is apostilled at a valilik or kaymakamlık, the provincial or district governor’s office; the extract is an administrative document, so the apostille falls to the local offices of the Ministry of Interior. Onikişubat writes that it certifies documents from any province, while Develi lists only its own district; art. 199 of the Notaries Law gives the any-province rule to notarial acts only, and one practice for administrative documents was not verified. The second way is e-Apostil, the official Turkish electronic apostille system: the marriage extract is among the document types it covers, the application is made by the holder from their own account on e-Devlet, the Turkish e-government portal, and the foreign office verifies the electronic document by uploading it on the official verification page. Whether the receiving office accepts an electronic document is a question to put to that office first.
The translation question on Formül B
Where the office is content with Formül B, it also says whether it wants that form translated; for Germany the missions say it does not. Where the single-language extract is asked for, it is translated by a sworn translator (yeminli tercüman, a translator whose oath is recorded at a Turkish notary) and certified by the notary; whether that notarial certification then needs its own apostille is decided by the receiving office. Whether a notarised translation made in Türkiye counts as a sworn translation in the receiving country varies by country and by office. For Germany the missions’ page is silent on this point, so this site makes no firm statement on it either.