Long-term residence permit: document requirements

This permit is granted to people who have already lived in Türkiye for an uninterrupted qualifying period. By the time you apply you will have opened several files, and much of your paperwork already exists.

⭐ What you can reuse

Translations do not expire on their own. What expires is the underlying document.

A diploma translation from three years ago is still a translation of the same diploma. A bank statement translation from three years ago is a translation of a document nobody will now accept.

Keep the wet-signed copies from every earlier file. At this stage that habit saves a real amount of money.

What must be fresh

Income evidence, health insurance and criminal record certificates are expected to be recently issued. Where these come from abroad, the whole chain is repeated — apostille, translation, notary.

The certification rule is unchanged

Foreign documents are apostilled in the issuing country, then translated by a sworn translator, then certified by a notary. Turkish documents are not translated.

Continuity of residence

Long absences can break the qualifying period. Your entry and exit record is a Turkish document obtained electronically and is not translated.

⚠ Which permit types count towards the period, and what interrupts it, are set by the authority. We do not reproduce those conditions here — confirm them from the authority’s current publication before preparing anything.

Criminal record certificates

Depending on your history, a certificate may be required from Türkiye and from a country of previous residence. The foreign one is a judicial document and is apostilled through that country’s judicial route.

These are also the shortest-lived documents in the file, so obtain them last.

Documents you may have forgotten

Over several years people change passports, addresses and sometimes marital status. Each of those changes produces a document that did not exist in your earlier files, and each foreign one goes through the full chain again.

Go through your earlier submissions item by item and mark what has changed since. That list, not the full checklist, is what you actually need to order.

Keep every wet-signed translation you receive. Certified copies ordered later mean another notary visit and another fee, while a copy you already hold costs nothing.

Where this fits

Which documents age and how quickly is set out on how long documents stay valid. For the narrower case of a straightforward extension, see renewing a residence permit.