The document was obtained, apostilled, translated and sent; the institution replies that the document is too old and returns the file. The holder points to the fresh date on the apostille; the institution is unmoved. This page separates two different periods: the validity of the apostille and the validity of the document. The first does not exist, and the second is not affected by the apostille.
Document too old: what the institution means
The substance of the objection is that the document is dated earlier than the period the institution accepts. It can concern documents that show a person’s situation at one moment: criminal record extracts, residence certificates, certificates of capacity to marry, medical reports and single-status certificates. The period is set by the institution, with one treaty exception in that list: for the certificate of capacity to marry drawn up on the multilingual form of CIEC convention no. 20, article 7 of the convention limits validity to six months from the date of issue. That the objection targets the document and not the apostille is not obvious at first sight, since the apostille carries the most recent date on the document.
No expiry for the apostille, an expiry for the document
The Convention sets no expiry period for the apostille. The Onikişubat District Governor’s Office explains what that silence does not mean: the absence of a general expiry in the Convention does not make an apostilled document valid without limit; if the document’s own legislation sets a validity or currency period, that period applies separately. The last sentence of the same page is the heading of this one: an apostille does not make an expired document valid again. The reason lies in article 5 of the Convention: the certificate attests only the signature, the capacity of the signatory and the seal. The date, currency and content of the document are outside its scope. Some websites give the apostille a life of a few months or a year; the Convention contains no such period, and sentences of that kind confuse the document’s period with the apostille’s.
Where the time limit comes from
The document’s period has two possible sources. The first is the Turkish legislation under which the document was issued; some documents are issued for a fixed period, and that period is printed on them. The second is the receiving institution’s own rule: it wants a document showing a person’s situation to be no older than a certain number of months, and that rule is independent of Turkish law. The second source causes more trouble, because it is not written on the document and differs from one institution to the next. Which institution in which country wants which document within what period was not found collected in any official source in this site’s survey; the only reliable information is the institution’s own written request.
Working the calendar backwards from the deadline
An expired document is not rescued by an apostille; a new document is obtained and the chain is rebuilt from the start. The chain itself is short. The service standard of the Ankara Governor’s Office gives about ten minutes per document for the apostille, and no fee is charged for it at the valilik or kaymakamlık (provincial or district governor’s office). The time is consumed not by the Turkish apostille but by translation, courier and the waiting period at the receiving institution. Global Affairs Canada states that processing times are the same whether a request is submitted directly or through a third-party provider, and its page shows it processing requests received twenty-five business days earlier; a document’s period can run out inside such a wait. The right sequence is therefore: learn the institution’s acceptance period, fix the delivery date, subtract the translation and shipping time from it, obtain the document only on that day and have it apostilled the same day.
Translation timed to the deadline
When a new document is obtained, the old translation is not attached to it; the document number, date and certificate number have changed, so the translation is made again. It is prepared from the apostilled version of the new document by a yeminli tercüman (a sworn translator whose oath is recorded at a Turkish notary) and certified by the notary. If the institution also wants an apostille on the translation, the second certificate is placed on the notarial certification. The translation date should fall after the document date and before the delivery date; whether the institution applies its freshness rule to the translation as well is asked together with the rest.