Birth, Marriage, and Death Records in Turkey – From Church to State

 

For many centuries, the primary civil registry tasks—birth registration, marriage registration, and death registration—were carried out exclusively by the church.

This reflected the fact that a unified state, as known in modern Turkey, did not exist at the time. Due to this instability, conducting uniform official procedures was nearly impossible.

Marriage ceremonies were traditionally performed by imams, but the core registry duties—maintaining records of births, marriages, and deaths—remained consistent. Shortly after a baby is born, parents, doctors, midwives, or hospitals report the birth to the registry office, where it is officially recorded and a birth certificate is issued.

Similarly, when a person passes away, the death certificate issued by a doctor is submitted, the death is registered, and an official death record is issued.

Since January 1, 2009, a new regulation has been in effect concerning civil status certificates. Birth certificates older than 110 years are transferred to state archives, and only authenticated copies of these archived documents are issued.

Marriage certificates are archived after 70 years, and death certificates after 30 years. Even for archived documents, an apostille or supplementary certification may be attached—for example, for citizenship-related procedures. These archived documents are available only in Turkish.

At Soylu Legal, we communicate with Turkish civil registry offices on your behalf to reliably obtain the birth, marriage, and death records you need for genealogy research or other personal purposes.