Ministry of Labour — work permits (ÇSGB)

Work permits for foreigners are granted by the ministry responsible for labour, through its international labour force directorate. The application is made by the employer rather than by the employee.

⭐ A lighter certification standard

This is the single most useful thing to know about the institution. Work permit legislation accepts a translation certified by a sworn translator or by an official authority. It does not require notarisation of every document the way residence permit rules do.

People arriving from a permit file expect to notarise everything and pay for it. Check item by item instead of assuming one regime’s rule covers the other — see Presidency of Migration Management.

The employer files

Applications are submitted electronically through the ministry’s own system, and the employer holds the account. The employee supplies documents; the employer uploads them and receives the correspondence.

⚠ That is where files stall. An information request sitting unopened in an employer’s account carries a deadline, and a missed deadline can close a file rather than pause it. Agree at the start who monitors it.

Which documents are foreign

Diplomas, professional certificates and, where it is not in the Latin alphabet, the passport. Each is apostilled in the country that issued it before it travels.

The company’s side — registry records, tax and social security documents, the employment contract drawn up here — is Turkish and is not translated.

Recognition may come first

For regulated professions, formal recognition of the qualification generally has to be settled before a permit can be granted. That is a separate procedure with its own timetable and it is the longest item in the chain.

Permits are tied to the employer

A permit belongs to the employment relationship it was granted for. Changing employer is a new application rather than a transfer, which is the practical reason to keep every wet-signed translation you receive.

Where to go next

The application itself is described on work permit application.

After a permit is granted

The employer's obligations continue: changes to the employment, and the ending of it, are notifiable within periods set by legislation. Those periods are short and are revised, so take them from the ministry rather than from any summary.

For the employee this matters because an unnotified change can surface much later, in a renewal or in a residence file, at a point when correcting it is considerably harder than declaring it was.

Where the translation cost sits

Almost entirely on the employee's side: a diploma, sometimes professional certificates, sometimes a passport not written in the Latin alphabet. Everything the company contributes is Turkish.