The criminal record extract (adli sicil kaydı) is one of the six document types of e-Apostil, the official Turkish electronic apostille system: an application from e-Devlet, the Turkish e-government portal, is enough to obtain it with an electronic apostille. That convenience misleads anyone carrying the record to the United Arab Emirates. The Emirates have no row in the HCCH status table; an Emirati authority is bound by no framework to recognise an apostille, and the Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs states plainly that it cannot legalise an apostilled document. The same record therefore follows an entirely different path, described here link by link together with what remains unverified on the Emirati side.
First question: is there an Emirates row
The first question that decides a document’s route is not its type but whether the destination has a row in the HCCH status table. For the Emirates the answer is no; the state is absent from the HCCH list of Members as well, and from the records of the 1968 European Convention and of CIEC 16 and 17. The apostille chain never starts. That a criminal record counts as a judicial document whose original can be apostilled at the judicial commission, or that it belongs to the six e-Apostil document types, has no bearing on this route: both certificates are unreadable stamps to an Emirati office. The legalisation chain applies.
Barcode printout or wet-signed copy of the criminal record
In the Ministry’s sheet the chain opens with translation, and a Turkish notary certifies the translation. The notary wants to see the document the translation rests on. A criminal record extract exists either as a barcode printout from e-Devlet or as a wet-signed copy from the criminal records unit at the courthouse. Turkish offices place no paper apostille on the barcode printout; whether a notary accepts that printout as the basis for certifying a translation in the legalisation chain, and whether the Emirati mission asks for the wet-signed copy, was not confirmed by any official source in this site’s survey. Where doubt exists, the notary and the mission are asked which version they take before the translation starts.
Translation, notary, governor, Ministry, mission: the five links
The Ministry’s sheet lists four links: the document is translated into the destination’s language, the translation is certified by a notary, the document is certified at the valilik (provincial governor’s office) or kaymakamlık (district governor’s office) of the place where it was issued, and finally the Ministry’s Legalisation Unit certifies it. The fifth link, certification at the Emirati mission in Türkiye, is not in the sheet; it matches the “double legalisation” described by the French foreign ministry. At the governor’s office the act is an ordinary certification, not an apostille: the paper receives a note attesting the notary’s signature, not the square certificate of the Convention.
An e-Apostil obtained by mistake
A holder who has already obtained an e-Apostil cannot use that electronic record on the Emirati route; the Ministry does not legalise apostilled documents, so the record cannot enter the chain. The remedy is a fresh criminal record extract and a chain built from the start, beginning with translation. The same holds for a paper apostille obtained by mistake from the judicial commission. Both errors share a cause: the certificate was obtained before anyone checked whether the destination applies the Convention. According to its FAQ the system issues no e-Apostil for countries outside the Convention, and its country list does not mirror the HCCH table one to one; an electronic record obtained for another destination is of no use on arrival in the Emirates.
The Legalisation Unit and the rest of the file
The fourth link is the Legalisation Unit of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Ankara; its detailed procedure is on the Ministry’s own page, and the Ministry’s sheet states that a document already apostilled is not legalised there. If the file holds other documents besides the criminal record, a diploma or a medical report for instance, each of them runs through the same links with its own notarised translation and its own governor’s certification.
Arabic or English: the opening link and the unverified points
On this route the translation moves from the end of the file to its beginning: in the apostille chain it follows the certificate, in the legalisation chain everything starts with it, since what is being certified is the notary’s signature under the translation. Whether the target language is Arabic or English depends on the Emirati institution receiving the record; the language preference, the certification procedure and the fee of the Emirati mission were not surveyed on this site. Whether the mission asks for anything further after the Ministry’s certification was not verified either. The one certainty on this route is the order: translation, notary, governor, Ministry, mission; no apostille appears anywhere in it.