The clearest difference between a paper apostille and an electronic one lies in how the receiving authority checks it. On paper the seal, the signature and the serial number are examined by eye and, if need be, by asking the issuing office. For an electronic document the check is made by uploading the document itself to an official page; the foreign institution does not need to telephone an office in Türkiye. This page describes where and how that check is made, what the Hague Conference means by an e-Register, and the separate route for verifying a paper apostille. This site is not the official system and performs no verification.
e-APP: two components, both implemented by Türkiye
The electronic Apostille Programme (e-APP) of the Hague Conference on Private International Law (HCCH) has two components. e-Apostille is the issuing of the apostille in electronic form; e-Register is an online register that lets the recipient confirm that an apostille was issued and matches the document. A State may implement one or both. The HCCH implementation chart, in its version of 13 August 2026, gives for Türkiye the Ministry of Justice and the Ministry of Internal Affairs as supervisory competent authorities, January 2019 as the start of e-Apostille, and a link for the e-Register; the link leads to the document verification page of the official Turkish system. Türkiye is thus among the States with both components in place.
How the official verification page works
The verification page of the official system works by file upload. It carries an upload button and a verify button and shows fields for file name, hash value, file size and file type. There is no lookup by apostille number or identity number; what is queried is the electronic file itself. The system’s own text says that foreign official authorities receiving electronic documents may confirm their authenticity with this button. The file in question is the one delivered to the holder and signed with the qualified electronic certificate (NES, nitelikli elektronik sertifika) of PTT, the national postal operator; a printed copy cannot be uploaded, so the recipient must be given the file itself.
What the foreign officer sees after the upload
What appears on the screen once a file is verified could not be read in this site’s survey: the page shows only the upload fields, and the result screen cannot be seen without a genuine file. What is known is that the page works on the hash value: if a single byte of the file changes, the digest changes and the match fails. This explains why the electronic document must be passed on unaltered, uncompressed and not re-saved. Whether a copy of the file forwarded by e-mail or on a storage device still verifies was not tested on this site.
The separate route for paper apostilles
A paper apostille issued by a valilik or kaymakamlık, the office of a provincial or district governor, is not verified on that page. Its route is the apostille verification page of e-İçişleri, the Ministry of Interior’s online platform, which asks for the apostille serial number, the verification code and the certification date and offers Turkish and English. The Onikişubat District Governor’s Office links to that page from its own apostille page. For paper apostilles issued by the judicial commissions (adli yargı adalet komisyonu başkanlığı, the presidencies attached to courthouses) no online verification route was found in this site’s survey. The commission does keep a register, however. Under articles 230 and 239 of the Turkish regulation on the administrative and clerical services of the courts (Official Gazette 06.08.2015, no. 29437), each judicial commission must keep a register of certification annotations (tasdik şerhi kaydı) for judicial documents to be given to foreign authorities; its columns include the signatory and their title, the destination country, the certification date, the translation language and the name of the person who collected the document. A paper apostille from a commission is therefore checked against the issuing commission’s register, the register that article 7 of the Convention requires every competent authority to keep and to consult on request.
Country practice this site did not measure
The HCCH notice of 1 July 2026 states that a validly issued e-Apostille cannot be refused simply because it is issued in electronic form. That is the rule; which institution in which country actually uses the Turkish verification page, and which still insists on paper, was not measured on this site. Two questions should therefore be put to the receiving institution before the document is sent: do you accept the electronic file, and will you verify it yourselves or do you want a printout. If the answer points to paper, the document is obtained on paper from the start: a paper apostille attests a handwritten signature, not an electronic signature or a barcode, so a printout enters the paper route only once the issuing institution has certified it by hand.
A translation beside the verified file
The verification page tests the integrity of the file, not its content; if the receiving authority needs to read the document, it will want a translation. How that translation is to be made for an electronic document is not stated in the sources read for this site: the official pages do not say whether it is made from a printout or from the file, or whether the certificate is included. What follows from the hash check is only that nothing may be inserted into the file itself, since any addition changes the hash value. Whether the translation needs a notary’s certification, and an apostille on that certification, is a question for the receiving institution; the notary is asked how it treats an electronic document, and an apostille on a notarisation is obtained on paper, since notarised translations are not on the e-Apostil list. A translation office does not perform the verification and does not assess its result.