In Türkiye the apostille on paper is issued by provincial and district governors and by the presidencies of the judicial commissions; issuing and delivering the same certificate electronically needed a legal provision of its own. That provision is article 22 of the Postal Services Law no. 6475, and it defines PTT, the national postal operator, not as an authority issuing apostilles but as an intermediary. This page sets out the legal basis of e-Apostil, who does what, the steps of the procedure and the names of the services on e-Devlet, the Turkish e-government portal. This site is not that system; the official address is www.eapostil.gov.tr.
Article 22 of Law no. 6475: intermediary, not issuer
A phrase was added to the first paragraph of article 22 by article 64 of Law no. 7101, and article 66 of the same law fixed 1 January 2019 as the date on which the change took effect. The added phrase defines PTT’s task: intermediary operations for delivering electronically to the persons concerned, subject to the protection of personal data, documents to which the competent units have affixed the certificate (apostille) under the Convention approved by Law no. 3028. The text is explicit that the “competent units” issue the apostille and that PTT performs “intermediary operations”; that distinction shapes the whole operation of the system.
Who does what: ministries, commissions, PTT
For a judicial document the apostille is applied by the Ministry of Justice through the presidencies of the judicial commissions (adli yargı adalet komisyonu başkanlığı) at the courthouses; for an administrative document by the Ministry of Interior. The HCCH e-APP chart records these two ministries as Türkiye’s supervisory competent authorities. PTT receives the application, forwards the document to the competent institution and delivers the electronic document to the applicant. The system’s data protection notice divides the roles the same way: the units competent to issue the apostille are the data controllers, PTT is the data processor, and its responsibility is limited to the security of the data it processes on the unit’s behalf. The Ministry of Justice’s internal guide shows that a request arriving through PTT reaches the judicial commission through UYAP, the judiciary’s case management system.
The four stages described by the system itself
By the system’s own definition the procedure has four stages: an application is made on the official site for the document to be apostilled; the application is forwarded to the competent institution (the Ministry of Justice or the Ministry of Interior); the competent institution creates the document electronically; the document is delivered to the applicant, again through the official site, by secure data transmission. The delivered document is signed by PTT with a qualified electronic certificate (NES, nitelikli elektronik sertifika). An e-Devlet login is mandatory for the application and is made from the holder’s own account; this site asks for no login details and takes no applications. The service fee is charged per document and the amount is stated on the official FAQ.
Five services under the word apostil on e-Devlet
A search for “apostil” on turkiye.gov.tr returns five services, all five behind a login. Four are listed under PTT’s name: criminal record e-Apostil application, e-Apostil general application, PTT e-Apostil, and e-Apostil application document verification. The fifth is the Ministry of Interior’s apostille document verification, which queries the paper apostilles issued by provincial and district governors’ offices. How the four PTT services differ from one another, in particular the difference between “general application” and “PTT e-Apostil”, could not be read in this site’s survey because each requires a login.
From January 2019 to December 2023: how the list grew
The amendment took effect on 1 January 2019, and the HCCH chart gives January 2019 as the start of e-Apostille in Türkiye. The page of the Ministry of Justice press release announcing that criminal record extracts and court decisions had moved to e-Apostil shows the date 15 October 2019. A notice of the Turkish Consulate General in Guangzhou, published on the Foreign Ministry’s site, places the start on 01.01.2019 with criminal record extracts and court decisions as the first stage; what the October date on the press release page marks is not stated there. The same notice dates the later steps: the civil registry extract produced electronically by the General Directorate of Population and Citizenship Affairs since June 2021; criminal record applications through e-Devlet from 11 April 2022, with a single screen to produce the record and apply from 18.12.2023; and the multilingual birth, marriage and death extracts from 28 December 2023.
The translation link the law does not mention
The legal provision says nothing about translation; the system issues and delivers the apostille certificate electronically and nothing more. The other sources read for this site do not say either how the downloaded document is to be translated, from a printout or from the file; the receiving institution is asked. An apostille on a notarised translation is obtained on paper, from the provincial or district governor in any province or district, since notarised translations are not on the e-Apostil list. A translation office renders the text in this chain; it does not issue the apostille, does not operate the system and does not make the application.