Name equivalence certificate (İsim Ayniyat)

Very few foreigners get through a Turkish document file without meeting this problem. A name written one way on a passport, another way on a birth certificate, and a third way on a diploma — and an institution that will not accept that they are the same person without evidence.

Why it happens

Different countries transliterate differently, and the same country transliterates differently across decades. Add a marriage that changed a surname, a patronymic that some systems record and others do not, and diacritics that a Turkish keyboard renders differently, and a single person acquires several spellings.

⭐ Obtain it once

The request appears in residence permit files, work permit files, property transactions, marriage files, bank account openings and citizenship applications. It is the same request every time.

Obtaining the document once, having it translated once and keeping the wet-signed copies is far cheaper than meeting it six times. Order extra certified copies at the outset — an additional copy at the same notary visit is much less trouble than a second visit later.

Who issues it

Where the difference originates abroad, the certificate is generally issued by the authority of the country concerned — a registry office, a court, or the mission representing it. As a foreign document it then needs apostille in that country and a notarised sworn translation here.

⚠ Which authority issues it, and in what form, differs by country. Ask the institution that asked you for it what it will accept before ordering anything, because a document from the wrong authority is not cured by translation.

Transliteration in translation

A translation does not decide how your name is spelled. The translator follows the spelling on your passport, since that is the document Turkish institutions treat as the reference.

So send the passport page with every document you send. Without it, a name written in another script has to be transliterated from scratch, and a translation whose spelling differs from your passport creates exactly the problem you are trying to solve.

Related mismatches

The same principle covers dates of birth recorded differently, places of birth named under an older name, and parents’ names appearing on some documents and not others. Each is evidenced from the registry that holds the original record.

Where this fits

How names are carried across from another script is covered on passport translation when not in Latin script, and the civil status route is on multilingual civil status extracts.