Registering a Death Abroad with Türkiye

When a Turkish citizen dies abroad, the death has to be entered in the Turkish family register. Until then the family register may still show the person as living.

Two places to report

The usual route is the Turkish embassy or consulate. Under the implementing regulation to the Civil Registration Services Law, the death is reported by handing the document obtained from the local authorities to the mission, which registers it in the system. If the mission cannot register it that way, it prepares a death notification form in two copies and sends it, with the deceased's identity card, to the civil registry office where the family register is kept.

If the death could not be reported to a mission for any reason, the General Directorate of Civil Registration explains that the district civil registry office applied to in Türkiye draws up the death record once the foreign official document has been translated into Turkish and duly certified. Separately, the Civil Registration Services Law provides that for people shown as living in the family register although they have died, the civil registry office draws up the death record when an application is made with a document proving the death.

The foreign death certificate

For documents from countries party to the Apostille Convention, the regulation requires the apostille attached to the original and a Turkish translation approved by a notary. Multilingual civil status documents issued under the conventions of the International Commission on Civil Status are processed without any certification. Documents issued by honorary consulates are not acted on.

The Turkish Consulate General in Berlin adds a point from its practice: where the deceased was the foreign spouse of a Turkish citizen, the death is entered in the Turkish spouse's register.

We translate death certificates into Turkish in Ankara through translators sworn before a Turkish notary. The mission or the civil registry office decides on the entry.