Turkish civil status documents

Almost every Canadian file needs at least one document from the Turkish civil registry, and applicants routinely order the wrong one because the Turkish system organises these records differently from the systems the instructions were written for.

What the Turkish registry issues

The Turkish population registry holds a continuous record of a person and their family links, and it issues extracts from it rather than the separate certificates a French or Canadian system would produce. The main forms you will meet are:

• The population registry extract, which shows your identity data and, in its fuller version, your family: parents, spouse, children. It is the workhorse of a Turkish document set and often answers what an instruction calls a birth certificate.
• The birth record, evidencing the fact and place of birth and the parents.
• The marriage record, evidencing the marriage and its date.
• Records of later events — divorce, death, a change of name — which in the Turkish system appear as entries against the register rather than always as separate documents.

Read what your instructions actually ask for and match it to the Turkish document that proves it, rather than to the document with the closest-sounding name. Where you cannot tell, ask the receiving body to describe the fact it wants evidenced.

Marginal annotations are the point, not the decoration

Later entries against a record — a marriage, a divorce, a recognition, a name change — are frequently the very facts the authority is checking, and they are also the lines most often cropped out of a scan or left out of a translation. They belong in both. The concept and its French name are on the marginal notes page, and the translation rule on the seals page.

The multilingual version, and its limit in Canada

Turkish civil status records can in some cases be issued on a multilingual form carrying columns in several languages, including French. These forms exist because of an international arrangement between the states that are party to it, and within that group they can remove the translation step altogether.

Canada is not a party to that arrangement. A Canadian or Québec body is therefore not bound to accept a multilingual extract in place of a translation, and it may or may not do so as a matter of its own practice. Never plan on the basis that the multilingual version removes the translation: ask the receiving body, in writing, whether it will accept one, and keep the answer. The multilingual extracts page sets out where the line falls, and the term page explains the form itself.

Electronic printouts and wet-signed copies

Many of these records can be printed from the state's electronic services with a verification code. Some receiving bodies accept the printout; apostille authorities generally do not work from one, so where an apostille is in prospect the document has to be obtained as a signed and sealed copy from the registry office. The electronic documents page covers the distinction, and it decides which version to order in the first place.

The apostille

Civil registry documents are administrative documents, so the apostille is obtained from the governorship or district governorship, in the province where the document was issued — not at the courthouse, which handles judicial and notarial documents. Whether one is required depends on the reader: immigration files often do not ask, while courts, professional orders and some assessments do. Because the apostille has to be inside the translation, decide before translating. See the apostille page.

Names, and why they drift here first

Civil status records carry your name, your parents' names and places of birth, all in Turkish spelling, and these are the fields a receiving body compares against your passport and against every other document in the file. Where the record shows a former name, obtain the registry document that connects the two names and submit it with the set. The name spelling page explains why the passport is the reference throughout.

What we obtain

Under a power of attorney we request the registry documents in the version the receiving body has specified, including the multilingual form where it is useful and available, in wet-signed and sealed form where an apostille is in prospect; we take administrative documents to the competent governorship for the apostille; and we courier the originals with a complete colour scan of every side. Turnaround for the Turkish side is given in the written quotation, and the fee structure is on the fees page.