A university abroad, a scholarship body or a professional licensing board may ask a Turkish graduate for the transcript rather than, or in addition to, the diploma: it may want to see which courses were passed with which grades, not only that the degree was awarded. The transcript (transkript or not dökümü) comes from the same university as the diploma, but it is a separate document, and its apostille chain is built on its own. This page deals with the questions specific to the transcript; the diploma has its own page on this site.
The transcript is its own document, apart from the diploma
An apostille covers only the document it is placed on. An apostille obtained on the diploma says nothing about the transcript. Before the file is planned, the receiving institution should say exactly which document it wants and how it treats the difference between the diploma supplement and the transcript, because the two cannot be substituted for one another.
Zile’s division of work on a university transcript
The apostille page of the Zile District Governor’s Office states that the originals of student documents issued by a university in the province, diplomas and transcripts alike, are apostilled by the valilik, the provincial governor’s office, and that the apostille on the notarised translations of those documents is placed by the kaymakamlık, the district governor’s office. The division follows from what the apostille attests: on the original, the signature of a university official; on the translation, the signature of the notary. Other provinces and districts may arrange the work differently, so the office should be asked which copy it takes before the applicant sets off.
An e-signed transcript with a barcode
A transcript may also be issued as an e-signed, barcoded document that the student downloads from the university’s own system or from e-Devlet, the Turkish e-government portal. Such a printout carries no handwritten signature, and the governor’s and district governor’s offices do not place a paper apostille on a plain barcode printout. Under the rule published by the Onikişubat District Governor’s Office, a printout of an e-signed document is considered for an apostille once an official of the issuing institution has physically certified it with their name, title, handwritten signature and the institution’s seal; the apostille then attests that official’s signature and capacity rather than the barcode. When asking the registrar’s office for a signed copy, it helps to say that the copy is meant for an apostille.
Transcripts are outside the e-Apostil list
e-Apostil, the official Turkish electronic apostille system, accepts applications for the criminal record extract, court judgments, the civil registry extract and the multilingual birth, marriage and death extracts. Neither the transcript nor the diploma is on that list. For a transcript the only route today is the paper one: a copy with a handwritten signature, an apostille at the provincial or district governor’s office, and, where the receiving institution asks for it, a notarised translation with a second apostille on the notarial certification.
A foreign transcript entering Türkiye through YÖK
When a transcript from a foreign university is submitted in Türkiye for recognition, the direction reverses: the apostille is obtained in the country of the university and the Turkish translation is certified by a Turkish notary. The recognition page of Yükseköğretim Kurulu (YÖK), the Turkish Council of Higher Education, requires an apostille on the diploma and the transcript of those who studied in Ukraine; for academic documents from Bulgaria it asks that both the original and the translation made there carry the seal and the apostille of the Bulgarian Ministry of Education and Science. For other countries YÖK’s page contains no explicit apostille line, and the current document list should be read before applying. For secondary school recognition, the directorates of national education likewise ask for transcripts of past years together with the apostilled or consular-certified original diploma.
Course titles and grading in the transcript translation
The translation is made once the original carries its apostille; whether the apostille itself is rendered is for the evaluating institution to say. On a transcript the translator’s task is to carry over the course titles and the grades; converting the grading scale into the receiving country’s system is the job of the institution evaluating the document, not of the translator. Column headings such as letter grade, credit and term are kept in full, and the university’s explanation of its grading system, where printed, is translated as well. Once the translation has been certified by a notary, whether that certification needs its own apostille is again decided by the institution receiving the file.