Work permit: Turkish documents

Work permit files rest on an employer’s offer. What the Turkish side has to supply is evidence that you can do the job and that your history is documented.

Experience evidence

Employer reference letters are the centre of it, and their weakness is predictable: they state a job title and nothing else. A letter that does not describe actual duties cannot be matched to an occupational classification, and unmatched experience is not counted. Ask for duties, dates, hours per week and salary, on letterhead, signed and stamped. See Turkish employment letter.

The record that does not depend on employers

Turkey keeps a central record of declared employment periods. Companies close and managers become unreachable, but the periods remain recorded. It proves duration, not duties — the two documents belong together. See social security employment record.

Check the dates match

Discrepancies between an employer letter and the social security record raise a question that delays the file. Compare them before submitting; if a period is missing from the record, correcting it takes time and is best started early.

Regulated professions

Healthcare, law, engineering, teaching: a permit to enter is not permission to practise. Professional recognition is a separate process run by the relevant regulatory body, with its own document list and its own timeline — usually much longer than the permit itself. In Québec these are professional orders, which frequently require translations from their own members. See professional order.

Criminal record extract

Short acceptance window, so request it late in the sequence. Obtained from the Turkish judicial system, and where legalisation is needed the competent authority is the judicial commission rather than the provincial governorate.

Education documents

Diploma and transcript, apostilled where required, and possibly a credential assessment depending on the route. See credential assessment explained.

What we do

We obtain Turkish documents, handle the certification chain, translate, and courier. We do not deal with your employer’s Canadian obligations and we do not advise on which permit stream applies to you.

Start the professional recognition first

Where a profession is regulated, the recognition file is almost always slower than the permit file — sometimes by a year or more, because it can require examinations or supervised practice. It also has the longest document list, frequently including course descriptions. If you intend to practise rather than simply to work, open that file before anything else and let the permit timeline follow it, not the other way round.