After a death in the family, the files opened abroad go to very different institutions: a bank, an insurer, a pension fund, a notary or a court. All of them want an official record of the death, but each accepts it in its own way. The nüfus müdürlüğü, the Turkish civil registry office, issues the record either as a single-language death extract (ölüm kayıt örneği) or as the multilingual Formül C, and the two documents do not travel the same road.
Reporting a death to a German pension fund or insurer
Formül C is the death extract under the CIEC convention of 8 September 1976 on multilingual extracts from civil status records. The convention exempts the extract from legalisation and the form is multilingual; whether a translation is required is for the receiving authority, and for Germany the German missions in Türkiye state that neither a translation nor an apostille is needed. Whether a pension institution or an insurer notified of a death is content with Formül C is for that institution to say. What a private insurer accepts is asked of the insurer itself.
Why an estate file asks for more than Formül C
An inheritance procedure needs more than the record of the death: who the heirs are, the last place of residence of the deceased, marriages and children. Which of these fields Formül C carries was not verified against an official source in this site’s survey. The file may then call for the nüfus kayıt örneği, the full civil registry extract, and for a certificate of inheritance. The registry extract is not multilingual; for Germany it needs an apostille and a translation by a sworn translator. The certificate of inheritance follows a route that depends on which Turkish authority issued it, described on its own page of this site. The death record is one piece of that file, and which pieces the foreign notary or court wants is asked of it in writing.
Apostille on the death extract, paper or electronic
For states party to the Apostille Convention that are outside the 1976 convention, the death extract needs an apostille. The paper extract with the registrar’s handwritten signature and seal is apostilled at a valilik or kaymakamlık, the provincial or district governor’s office. The Onikişubat office accepts documents issued in any of the 81 provinces, 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 death extract is also among the documents covered by e-Apostil, the official Turkish electronic apostille system, so the holder can apply through e-Devlet, the Turkish e-government portal; the apostille is then attached to an electronic document that the foreign authority checks by uploading it on the official verification page. In which form the receiving institution wants to take delivery of an electronic document should be asked beforehand.
The limits of an apostilled death record
The apostille confirms the signature of the registrar, the capacity in which they signed and the seal. It does not confirm that the death occurred or that the information on the record is current. An apostilled death extract therefore does not on its own establish who inherits in a foreign succession case. How recent the extract has to be, and which further documents accompany it, is decided by the authority handling the file.
Translating the death file, and the French exemption
An institution content with Formül C decides whether it also wants the form translated; the German missions say no translation is needed for Germany. Where the single-language death extract or the civil registry extract is asked for, it is translated by a sworn translator (yeminli tercüman, whose oath is recorded at a Turkish notary) and the translation is certified by the notary; whether that certification needs its own apostille is for the receiving institution to say. For France there is a further point: the French Foreign Ministry’s legalisation table exempts Turkish civil status documents from legalisation, so a death record going to France needs no apostille, while the translation question is asked separately: the 1976 convention contains no translation exemption, its article 8 speaking only of legalisation.