Proving Turkish work experience

Work experience is where Turkish files most often look thin, and rarely because the experience is thin. It is because the applicant produces a reference letter — a document about how well they worked — when the officer needs a document about what they did, for how long, and in what capacity.

Two documents that work together

The employer letter describes the role. The social security service record proves that the employment was registered and for how long. Each covers the other's weakness: a letter can be written by anyone, and a service record says nothing about what the job involved. Files that produce both are considerably harder to question than files that produce either.

What the employer letter has to contain

1. Your full name as it appears in your passport.
2. The exact start and end dates of employment, not just the years.
3. Your job title, and whether the post was full time or part time, with weekly hours.
4. A description of the duties actually performed, in enough detail for an officer to match them against an occupational classification.
5. Salary information as recorded, reproduced in the currency shown and never converted.
6. The name, position and contact details of the signatory.
7. The company's letterhead, its stamp, the date and a wet signature.

Two of these carry more weight than the rest. The duties paragraph is what an officer reads to decide whether the experience is what you say it is, and a letter that only states a title leaves them nothing to work with. And the contact details matter because a receiving body may verify the letter directly with the signatory.

What the letter should not do

It should not praise you, should not translate your job title into a Canadian equivalent, and should not adjust dates to be tidy. A job title is a fact about a Turkish company, and it is kept in its original form with an explanation where needed — the same rule as for institution names, set out on the institution names page. Occupational classification is the officer's job, not the employer's and not the translator's.

The social security service record

The Turkish social security system holds a record of registered employment: employers, periods and premium days. It is independent of the employer, survives the company's closure, consolidates a scattered career into one document, and is generally the strongest evidence available for older jobs. It does not describe duties, so it supports the employer letter rather than replacing it.

The record is usually obtained through the state's electronic services, and that raises the question dealt with on the electronic documents page: whether a printout is accepted, and when a wet-signed and sealed copy has to be obtained from the institution instead. If an apostille is likely to be required, the wet-signed version is the one to start with.

When the employer no longer exists

Companies close, merge and change names, and a letter is then impossible. The service record carries the period on its own, and it can be supported by whatever survives: payslips, an employment contract, tax records, a certificate from the trade registry showing the company's existence and its successor, or a statement from a former manager written in a personal capacity with their own identification attached. None of these is as strong as a company letter; together they are usually enough to be examined seriously.

Self-employment and family businesses

Where you were the employer, a letter to yourself proves little. What is produced instead is the documentary trail: trade registry records, tax registration and returns, invoices, and social security registration in the self-employed category. Family businesses attract closer reading for the same reason, and the registry and tax documents are what carry the file.

Translation, and which rule applies

These documents appear in both provincial and federal files, and the rule follows the reader rather than the document: the provincial standard is on the Québec translation rule page, the federal one on the federal rules page. Where the federal declaration route applies, the translation is work we can take on from Türkiye.

What we obtain for you

Under a power of attorney we request the social security service record in its signed and sealed form, obtain trade registry and tax records, approach former employers for letters in the terms above, arrange the apostille where a receiving body requires one, and courier the wet-signed set with a complete colour scan. Obtaining Turkish documents from abroad describes how the power of attorney works when you are not in the country.