About us
Hacettepe Tercüme Ltd. Şti. has worked from Kızılay in Ankara since 2008. This page lists what we do, how we work and where the limits of our role sit — so you can tell in a minute whether you should be talking to us at all.
Last updated 9 September 2026
This site is the francophone arm of Hacettepe Tercüme Ltd. Şti., a translation company that has worked from the Kızılay district of Ankara since 2008. The full registered name, the trade registry entry and the address are printed on the contact page.
Ankara matters here for a practical reason rather than a sentimental one. The ministries, the central registry offices, the provincial governorship that issues apostilles for administrative documents and the judicial commission that issues them for court documents are all in the same city. A file that would otherwise be posted between provinces is walked between offices.
Why the French-speaking axis
Turkish documents going abroad mostly follow well-worn English-language routes, and there is no shortage of help for those. French-speaking destinations are different: Québec, Wallonia and Brussels, French-speaking Switzerland and Luxembourg each apply their own rule about who may translate, and those rules contradict each other. Advice written for one of them is actively misleading for the next.
These English pages exist because that group of readers is badly served. You are told to obtain a traduction assermentée, or that your file needs a traducteur agréé, and nothing explains what the difference is or which one applies to you. That is the gap the glossary section was written to close.
What we actually do
- Obtaining documents in Türkiye. Civil status records, criminal record certificates, social security service records, sealed university transcripts and land registry documents, requested under a power of attorney when you are not in the country.
- Translation between Turkish, French and English. Certified in the Turkish manner: a translator sworn before a Turkish notary signs the translation, and the notary certifies that signature.
- Running the Turkish certification chain. Notarisation, then the apostille step at the competent Turkish authority, in the order the receiving office requires.
- Dispatch. Wet-signed originals couriered to an address abroad, with tracking.
The sequence is set out step by step on obtaining Turkish documents from abroad.
Where the acceptance rule comes from
Every francophone system decides for itself which translations it accepts. Some procedures ask for a translator on their own register — a Québec professional order, the Belgian national register, a Swiss cantonal list — while many others accept a sworn translation prepared in Türkiye alongside the correct certification chain. The rule belongs to the receiving office, not to the document and not to us.
We tell you which condition applies at the top of the relevant pages rather than at the bottom of a contract, and we say it before quoting rather than after payment. Is a translation made in Türkiye accepted in Québec? is the fullest version of that answer.
What we are not, full stop
We are not immigration consultants, lawyers or a public authority, and we do not represent anyone before an immigration office. We do not assess whether your application will be approved, we do not fill in application forms for you, and we do not hold ourselves out as able to influence a decision. When a question is legal rather than documentary, the honest answer is that you need a lawyer or a licensed consultant in the destination country.
How we handle a question we cannot verify
Requirements change, and much of what circulates in forums is a year out of date. Where we have not been able to verify something at source, we write that plainly and tell you to confirm it with the receiving office on the day you apply. We do not fill the gap with a confident guess, and we do not publish figures for third-party items whose amounts are set by someone else — the notary charge being the clearest case, explained on the fees page.
Your documents
The files people send us are unusually sensitive: criminal record certificates, medical reports, divorce judgments, records showing religion. Access is restricted to the people working on the job, and client documents are never uploaded to public machine-translation websites. The full policy is published in Turkish, and we will explain any part of it in English if you ask.
Frequently asked questions
In Türkiye the certification attaches to the individual translator and to the notary who certifies the signature, not to the company. There is no Turkish state licence for translation agencies, so any agency claiming one is describing something that does not exist. What matters for your file is which register the receiving authority recognises.
No. We work from Ankara only. Everything abroad is handled by courier and correspondence, which is why the Turkish end of the work — obtaining, certifying and dispatching documents — is what we are useful for.
With Turkish institutions, yes, where a power of attorney allows it. With foreign authorities, no. We are not authorised to represent applicants abroad and would not be recognised if we tried.
Because it is often true. A multilingual civil status extract, a power of attorney drawn up at a Turkish consulate or a document already issued in French may need no translation at all. Telling you that is cheaper for you and keeps the advice on this site worth reading.