A Turkish citizen marrying at a French mairie prepares a shorter file than the same person would for Germany. The two states have joined different treaties: France has acceded to CIEC Convention 17 of 1977, and under it the French administration asks for no legalisation on Turkish civil status records. This page shows where that exemption begins and ends, what the multilingual forms change for the translation, and who may translate on the French side. Other documents bound for France, a diploma for instance, sit outside the exemption; that route has its own page on this site.
Dc and footnote (5) in the Turkish row of the MEAE table
The legalisation table of the French Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs (MEAE) gives nine columns per country. In the Turkish row the first column, civil status records, carries the code Dc: exemption based on the 1977 convention. The second, third and fourth columns, judicial documents, affidavits and notarial documents, carry footnote (5). That footnote says two things: documents relating to a person’s civil status, capacity, family situation, nationality, domicile or residence, and all other documents produced with a view to the celebration of a marriage or the drawing up of a civil status record, are exempt from legalisation; other documents need an apostille. A marriage file sits squarely inside the footnote.
Which Turkish papers in a marriage file are exempt
The birth extract, the evlenme ehliyet belgesi (certificate of capacity to marry), the record showing that an earlier marriage has ended and the nüfus kayıt örneği (full civil registry extract) are civil status records; the first column’s exemption applies to them directly. A divorce decree from an earlier marriage is a judicial document and would on its own need an apostille, but presented with a view to a marriage it falls under footnote (5). The same reasoning covers a declaration of single status drawn up at a Turkish notary. The exemption replaces the apostille; no stamp or certificate is looked for on the document.
Formül B and the multilingual certificate of capacity to marry
The exemption removes legalisation, not translation, and the CIEC conventions behind the multilingual forms do not remove it either: CIEC 16, behind Formül A, B and C, has the extracts accepted without legalisation (article 8) and contains no translation clause, and CIEC 20 on the certificate of capacity to marry exempts from legalisation only (article 10). The CIEC status table, read on 30.09.2026, shows CIEC 16 in force for France since 16.01.1987; France does not appear among the eleven states bound by CIEC 20. When the Turkish civil registry directorate issues the multilingual certificate of capacity and the multilingual birth extract, the core of the file arrives with French field labels; whether a mairie then drops the translation is for the mairie to say. The translation link opens when a single-language document is requested, or when a document with no multilingual form, the full civil registry extract for instance, enters the file.
Where the exemption ends inside the same file
If a document unrelated to the marriage joins the file, a diploma demanded by an employer or a company paper, the second half of footnote (5) applies: apostille. The fifth column of the MEAE table, administrative documents, carries footnote (9), which likewise binds documents outside civil status to the apostille. Whoever prepares the file asks the question document by document: is this paper produced with a view to the marriage, or did it enter the file for another reason? The answer decides its route.
Traducteur habilité, traducteur agréé and the consulate’s list
The French official pages do not use one word for the translator. service-public F1402 asks that a foreign public document be accompanied by a French translation made by a traducteur habilité; F12956 defines the traducteur agréé as a judicial expert entered on the lists of a cour d’appel or of the Cour de cassation; F1400 speaks of a traducteur assermenté for a translation that is itself to be apostilled. F12956 also describes a way for translations made abroad: the consulate’s website carries a list of translators recognised by the local authorities, and the consulate certifies the translator’s signature. In Türkiye that way has no list behind it: the Embassy of France’s translators page, updated on 4 September 2026, says the Embassy offers no translation service and links to the website of the Association des Traducteurs en Turquie. On an exempt document the order is short: obtain the document, then have it translated. There is no apostille link, so the usual rule of apostille first and translation second does not come into play on this route.
Unverified on the French marriage route
France Diplomatie writes that, for legalisation, a French translation may be made by a translator authorised before the authorities of the state of residence; that rule belongs to the legalisation route, and no source read for this site says which translation a French office accepts on an exempt Turkish document. The practice of individual mairies was not measured; faced with a clerk who asks for an apostille despite the exemption, the only general remedy is to show the Turkish row of the MEAE table. How far a mairie relies on the French field labels of the multilingual forms was not measured either.