Not every Turkish notarial document going abroad is a power of attorney. A formal notice (ihtarname) served on a tenant or a debtor, an undertaking (taahhütname) in which a person accepts an obligation, and a declaration (beyanname) in which someone states a fact are also drawn up or signed before a Turkish notary and presented to a foreign court, authority or counterparty. A foreign reader of such a paper asks who apostilled it and whether it matters that the notary wrote the text or only certified a signature under it. The power of attorney has its own page on this site.
Drawn up by the notary or signed before one
Article 1 of the Convention counts both situations as public documents, in two separate categories. Notarial acts form category (c): a text the notary draws up. Category (d) covers official certificates placed on documents signed by persons in their private capacity, and the English text names “official and notarial authentications of signatures” among them: the person drafts the notice or the declaration, and the notary certifies that the signature is theirs. In both cases what the apostille later attests is the notary’s signature, capacity and seal, not the wording of the notice or the truth of the declaration.
A district office table and Article 199
The apostille page of the Onikişubat District Governor’s Office (a kaymakamlık, a district governor’s office in Türkiye) contains a quick document check table. One row groups the notary-certified contract, the power of attorney, the certified statement, the specimen and the formal notice, describes them as documents certified by a notary and bearing the notary’s seal, and tells the applicant to bring them to the office for checking. The Turkish Notaries Law supplies the rule behind that row: under article 199, the signature and seal of the notary under an act done in Türkiye in due form and to be used abroad are certified by the highest civil administrator of any province or district, that is the vali or the kaymakam. An undertaking, not named in the row, is a notarial act under the same article.
No place limit on the certifying office
The words any province or district entered article 199 through Law no. 7533, dated 21 November 2024, which took effect on its publication in the Official Gazette on 30 November 2024. A formal notice drawn up by a notary in one town can therefore be apostilled at a governor’s office in another province. A foreign office reading a certificate issued far from the notary’s town is looking at the current rule.
Where the judicial commission fits
The Ministry of Justice circular 68/1 names two groups of apostille authorities: provincial governor’s offices for administrative documents, and the presidencies of the judicial commissions at the seats of high criminal courts for judicial documents. Notarial acts appear in the circular as public documents, but no separate authority is named for them there; that authority comes from article 199 of the Notaries Law. The judicial commission’s field is the original of a judicial document, and a notice, undertaking or declaration made before a notary goes to a governor’s office.
What the certificate leaves to the reader abroad
How a formal notice is to be served on an addressee abroad is a question separate from the apostille and was not verified in an official source in this site’s survey. The certificate does not show that the notice reached anyone, that the undertaking binds its maker or that the declaration is true; the foreign authority assesses those effects under its own law. Whether a notary can draw up such a paper directly in a foreign language or in two languages, and whether one certificate then covers both, was not verified either.
Order of steps when a translation is wanted
Where the receiving authority wants both the Turkish paper and a translation, the steps follow one another: the apostille on the notarial act, then a translation by a sworn translator, certified by a notary, with a second apostille on that certification if the authority asks for it. The translation carries the journal number, the date and the notary’s clause in full and adds no comment on the legal effect of the text.