No. The Convention sets no expiry for the apostille; the certificate attests the signature and seal as they were on the day it was issued, and that attestation does not age. What runs out is not the apostille but the document: if the legislation under which the document was issued, or the institution asking for it, sets a freshness condition, the apostille neither extends nor removes that condition.
The Convention and the district office agree
Article 5 of the Convention lists what the certificate attests and says nothing about how long; the model certificate in the annex has no end-date field, only the date of certification. The Onikişubat District Governor’s Office (a kaymakamlık, a district governor’s office in Türkiye) adds two sentences: the absence of a general expiry for the apostille in the Convention does not mean that the document is valid without limit; where the document’s own legislation sets a validity or freshness period, that period applies separately, and the apostille does not make an expired document valid again.
Three things people mean by an old apostille
- The document is old: if the institution wants a recent criminal record extract or a current civil registry extract, the problem lies in the document’s date, not in the apostille. How many months old a document may be is written by the institution; no period is given on this site.
- The document changed after the apostille: under article 5 the certificate attests the signature on the document and names its author, so the signature under a clause or certification added later is not named in it; whether a new apostille is then required is not settled in any source this site surveyed, and the receiving institution is asked.
- The law changed: how a later change in the competent authority affects a certificate already issued is not addressed in the sources this site surveyed.
Do the verification records have a time limit
Apostilles from provincial and district governor’s offices are queried on the e-İçişleri page, the portal of the Turkish Ministry of the Interior, by serial number, verification code and date of certification; the page asks for the date but states no time limit. In e-Apostil, the official Turkish electronic system, verification is done by uploading the file. Whether the verification result changes once the qualified certificate that signed the file has expired was not found in this site’s survey; a person who will use an electronic document years later should put that question to the official system. No information was found either on how long the query records are kept.
Handling a document returned as too old
If the institution has sent the document back as too old, there is no such operation as renewing the apostille; a new document is obtained and a new apostille placed on it. The old apostilled document does not become invalid; it simply fails that institution’s freshness condition, and another institution may accept the same document. That situation at the desk, and how the right timetable is built, are treated on one of the problem pages of this site; this page says only that the apostille itself has no expiry.
The translation follows the document’s calendar
The translation has no expiry of its own either; the notarial certification attests the translator’s signature as of the day it was given. But when the document is renewed, the translation is renewed with it, since the translation carries the text of the old document and the number of the old certificate; the serial number and date of the new apostille have to appear in the translation. On documents with a freshness condition the translation is therefore made right after the document has been obtained and apostilled; a translation made months earlier is not kept and attached to the new document. A translation office translates from the final version of the apostilled document; it does not assess the date range the institution will accept.