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Fatih, Istanbul · Monday–Friday
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ISTeshirni Group
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Residence and citizenship

Turkish citizenship

“Citizenship” is not one door: there is the ordinary route, the exceptional route through investment, the route through marriage, and citizenship by birth. And time under the temporary protection card does not open the ordinary one — that card gives no right to apply, and its years are not added to your years of residence. So we start from what you hold on paper: which door is open today, then we prepare the file and follow it with you until a decision is issued.

What is hard for you, we can manage — God willing

Approximate duration
Depends on your case
What we need to start
Your status on paper
First consultation
Free
Languages we work in
Arabic · Turkish · English

Who is this service for?

  • You have spent years in Türkiye and are asking whether the ordinary route is open to you at all.
  • You are considering the exceptional route (citizenship through investment) and want to know what it requires before you pay or buy anything.
  • You are married to a Turkish citizen and are asking about the marriage route and its conditions.
  • A child has been born to you in Türkiye and you are asking about the child's status and registration.
  • You have been offered “guaranteed citizenship” and want a neutral opinion before you sign or hand over your documents.

What we do

  • We start from one question: which route does your situation open today — the ordinary one, the exception, marriage, or birth?
  • We review what you hold on paper: the type, length and sequence of your residence permits, your civil registry record, and your family documents.
  • We prepare the documents and arrange certification and sworn translation of the Syrian records in the form the receiving authority accepts.
  • We complete the application and submit it to the competent authority for the route that applies to you.
  • We follow the file, tell you of any development, and supply whatever is requested later.
  • When the decision is issued we explain it as it is: what it actually means, and what the options are afterwards.

And what we do not do

  • We do not promise citizenship and we do not guarantee it. The decision belongs to the Turkish state through its competent authorities, and no office — ours included — can influence it.
  • We do not sell property and we do not broker investments. Our work is the file, the documents and the follow-up, not what you buy.
  • We do not work with anyone who tells you “guaranteed citizenship”. Whoever promises you a decision that is not theirs to make is promising you something they do not own.
  • We do not give you a duration. Whoever tells you “it comes through in such and such a time” is guessing, and then calling the guess a promise.
  • We do not ask for your bank card details or the password to your e-Devlet account, and we do not pay into a personal account. If you hand us an original document, you get a receipt in your name and you take it back whenever you ask.
  • We do not alter information on a document, we do not obtain a document outside its official route, and we do not put before an authority a document we know does not describe your situation as it is — whatever the reason, and even if you ask us to.
  • We are not a law firm; if your file needs a lawyer we tell you so and refer you to one.

Documents required for Turkish citizenship

This is the core list for most cases. Tick them off as you gather your papers — you can print this page and take it with you.

What we need from you to start

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Why do we ask this before anything else? Because the route is decided by what you hold, not by what you have heard. Someone who starts on the wrong route prepares perfectly good papers for the wrong door, and loses both the time and the fee. These few lines are enough for us to tell you which door is open today and which is not — before you pay for or buy anything. And if your file needs a document from a Turkish office — an address registration record, for instance — it is printed from e-Devlet or collected from the civil registry office, and we tell you so once your route is settled.

How the procedure runs for Turkish citizenship

  1. We establish the route

    You explain your situation: how long you have been in Türkiye, what permit you hold, what your family situation is. That is what decides the route and the document list — nothing before it.

    our partWhatsApp or at the office

  2. We review your status on paper

    The sequence of permits, the civil registry record, the name exactly as written on each document. This is where the gaps that stop a file later become visible, and knowing them now is cheaper than knowing them after submission.

    our part

  3. We prepare documents, certification and translation

    Registry extract, marriage or birth record, certification and sworn translation in the form the receiving authority requires — not in the generic form.

    your partDepends how fast you gather the papers

  4. We complete and submit the application

    We fill in the application with information matching your documents, review it with you before sending, then submit it to the competent authority.

    the authority’s part

  5. Follow-up until the decision

    We follow the state of the file and supply whatever is requested. When the decision is issued we explain what it means and what the next step is, whether it goes your way or not.

    the authority’s part

Cost: we separate what is paid to others from our fee

Paid to others

Official fees

Office fees, the notary, sworn translation and certification — paid to those who charge them, and varying by route and number of documents. These amounts do not pass through us and we take nothing from them — we give you the receipt.

Paid to us

Our follow-up fee

For establishing the route, reviewing your status on paper, preparing the documents and coordinating certification and translation, completing the application, and following through until the decision. We tell you the full amount before we begin.

The first consultation is free whether you continue with us or not. And if it turns out that your situation opens no route today, you learn that from us without paying anything — which serves you better than a file opened only to be closed. We also never ask for money for “speeding things up” or for “a contact on the inside”: there is no such thing in this file, and anyone offering it is selling you an illusion.

Read this before you pay any office

What usually stops a file

What stops citizenship files is rarely a sudden decision; it is usually a flaw that could have been seen on day one and surfaced late. These are the most common ones in the files that reach us:

Counting time under the temporary protection card towards the ordinary routeThe temporary protection card is not a residence permit, and the time spent under it does not count towards the years of residence required for ordinary naturalisation — that is the text of article 25 of the Temporary Protection Regulation (Geçici Koruma Yönetmeliği), not our reading of it. Building a file on that time means preparing correct papers for a closed route.
Starting on the wrong route“Citizenship” is one name for several different routes. Someone preparing the papers of a route that does not fit their situation submits a sound file to the wrong door, and loses both the time and the fee.
The name is written differently across documentsA single letter of difference between the passport, the registry extract and the marriage record makes the office read them as documents of different people, not of one person.
A gap or a flaw in the residence sequenceA period without a valid permit, or a permit that expired and was not renewed in time, stays visible in the record even when its owner has forgotten it. We review the sequence with you before any step.
The Syrian document is not certified in an acceptable formThe document is not read as it stands: it needs certification and sworn translation, and sometimes a recent registry extract. An out-of-date document is turned away at the appointment, not before it.
Waiting for an “apostille” on a Syrian documentSyria is not a party to the Apostille Convention — this is published in the status table of the Hague Conference. So there is no apostille to be stamped on a Syrian document; its route is a chain of certification followed by sworn translation. Waiting for a stamp that does not exist means months spent on a link that never arrives, and then starting the certification over.
The document does not match the province or the registered recordA document issued in a province other than the one your record is registered in, or a record not updated after a change in the family, sends the file back to the start.

The conditions, the periods and what is required on each route change by official decision, and differ by route and by each person's situation. We verify them when we study your case, and we do not publish amounts, thresholds or durations here that may be out of date: a figure left standing on a page after its source has changed is read as correct, and decisions get built on it.

Questions people ask about Turkish citizenship

Is “citizenship” a single route?
No — it is one name for several different routes: the ordinary route through long-term residence and its conditions, the exceptional route through investment, the route through marriage, and citizenship by birth. Which one applies to you is decided by what you hold today, not by what you heard from someone else — which is why there is no general answer that fits everyone. Send us your situation and we will tell you which door is open and which is not.
What exactly is the “exceptional route”?
It is an exceptional route granted by the state through a decision, and its best-known form is citizenship through investment. We prepare the file and the documents, complete the application and follow it; we do not sell property and we do not broker investments. And we do not write an amount or a threshold here, because those limits change by official decision and what is written today may be out of date within months — we verify what is required at the time we study your case and tell you then.
An office is offering me “guaranteed citizenship”. What should I do?
Ask them one question: who signs the decision? The answer is neither them nor us — citizenship is granted by a decision of the state, and no office can guarantee it. “Guaranteed” is not a better service; it is a promise of something the person making it does not own. We treat it as the first sign that should stop you, not the first reason to be reassured. In practice: ask for what you will pay and to whom in writing, never hand over original documents without a receipt, and never pay for “a contact” or for “speeding things up”. We guarantee our own work — the preparation of the file, its accuracy and its follow-up — and we do not guarantee a decision that is not ours to make.
Does marrying a Turkish citizen grant citizenship straight away?
It does not grant it automatically; it is a route with its own conditions and its own scrutiny, like the others. The first practical condition is that the marriage is formally established and registered in the Turkish records — and that is a procedure in its own right, which we handle for you if you have not completed it, whether at the civil registry office in Türkiye or at a Turkish mission abroad. After that the file is studied and verified, and the decision still belongs to the state.
Do my spouse and children go into the same file as me?
We do not assume that; we read each person's situation on its own. The date of entry, what each of them holds, and the civil registry record can differ between members of the same family, which is why we ask about your family situation in the first message. Once we have read it we tell you plainly: who is submitted with you, who needs an earlier step or a file of their own, and for whom this route does not apply today. Knowing that at the start is cheaper than discovering it once the file is running.
How long does the file take?
We do not give a figure we cannot keep. Part of the time is in our hands: preparing the documents, certification, translation and completing the application — and that part we tell you plainly. The larger part is in the hands of the official authority: its appointments and its study of the file, and nobody can promise you that. What we do commit to is that you always know where your file stands and which step is waiting on whom.
What if the decision does not go my way?
We read the decision with you and explain what it actually means, not what we wish it meant. Then we set out the options: supplying what is missing and reapplying, another route that suits your situation better, or a judicial path — and in that last case we refer you to a lawyer, because we are not a law firm and we do not claim to be.
I have held a kimlik for years — is the ordinary route open to me?
No, not on that basis. The migration authority's temporary protection FAQ states that the card does not give its holder the right to apply for citizenship; that its duration is not counted in the residence permit total is set out in article 25 of the Temporary Protection Regulation (Geçici Koruma Yönetmeliği). That does not mean every route is closed — others may apply depending on your situation. Send us exactly what you hold and we will tell you which route is yours, and if there is none right now we say so plainly.
All frequently asked questions

Official reference

Presidency of Migration Management — temporary protection FAQLast checked:

Related services

Residence permit in TürkiyeWhat stops most files is not the law but a missing document, or an application filed under a permit type that does not fit the case. So we start from your situation: which route is yours, what you actually need, and what gets checked before the appointment rather than after — then we follow it until the decision, and through to the card if it is approved.Registering a Turkish marriageWhat stops most marriage registration files is not a refusal but a document belonging to the other party: a civil record that still says “married”, an out-of-date certificate of no impediment, or a translation without notarisation. The registry reads the two situations together, not only the situation of whoever came to the office. So we start by reading both records before you prepare a single document, then arrange what the file actually needs — including the health report, which no one is exempt from — and follow it through until the family book is issued.Registering a marriage at the Turkish consulate in JordanThis route has one condition we cannot soften: one of the spouses must hold Turkish citizenship. Where it holds, the marriage is registered with the Turkish mission in Amman and a marriage record document is issued, usually without either spouse travelling. Where it does not hold, your route is a different one — registering the marriage inside Türkiye at the civil registry — and we say so in the first message, not after you have paid.Obtaining documents from SyriaA Syrian document is not finished the moment it is issued. Whoever will receive it — an office in Türkiye or a file in Europe — is what decides the form of certification and translation, so we start from that destination rather than from the document.Sworn translation and notarisationA document is not accepted because it has been translated, but because it is in the form the authority receiving it asked for: some procedures accept a sworn translation on its own, others require notarisation. And a Syrian document carries no apostille: Syria is not a party to the Apostille Convention. No office can validly ask you for one. Its route is a chain of certification that ends in translation. So we start from one question: who will receive it, and how was the request worded?Legal consultancy: our part and the lawyer's partWhat costs people most in official matters is rarely the difficulty of the law — it is standing in the wrong queue: a file whose route is the court, carried from office to office for months; or a file settled at a single counter, paid for as though it were a case. So we begin with one question: which door does your file go to, and who is able to open it — an official office, or a lawyer.

Not sure which route applies to you?

Send us your situation in one message: how long you have been in Türkiye, what permit you hold, and what your family situation is. We will tell you which route is open to you today. And if none of them is open right now, we will tell you honestly, and we will not charge you for that answer.

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