The decision is signed. Now the record has to be built

Last updated 18 August 2026Legal review Bayraktar Attorneys2 min readThe file

Approval creates a Turkish citizen who does not yet exist in the population register. Everything practical — the identity number, the card, the passport — follows from registration rather than from the decision itself.

Registration and the identity number

Approval is notified and the applicant is entered in the population register at the relevant civil registry office. Registration produces the eleven-digit Turkish identity number, which is the key to everything afterwards — banking, health cover, property records, tax, education.

Attend to it promptly. Until registration is complete you are a citizen on paper without the number that makes the status usable, and other processes that depend on it cannot begin.

The one thing to check carefully at registration

How your name is recorded. Transliteration from a non-Latin script, the order of given and family names, and inconsistencies between a passport and a birth record all become permanent at this point, and correcting them afterwards is a court process rather than an administrative one.

Where a problem already exists, name change and correction procedures and transliteration of foreign names set out the remedies. The same issue is discussed prospectively in the document set, because the best time to solve it is before it is recorded.

Identity card, passport and the practical steps

1. Identity cardApplied for after registration; the primary proof of status.
2. PassportIssued on application once the record exists; see Turkish passport applications.
3. Address registrationUpdate the address record in your own name.
4. Social security and healthMove onto the appropriate scheme where your basis of cover has changed.
5. Existing recordsUpdate banks, land registry, tax office and your employer with the new identity number.

Obligations, including the one people forget

Military service applies to male citizens within the statutory age limits, and naturalised citizens are not outside it — the position depends on age at acquisition and on service already performed elsewhere, so it should be established before the application rather than discovered after. Military service obligations for new citizens sets out the framework.

Tax is the second. Nationality is not the test for Turkish tax residence, but a life anchored here usually is, and the interaction with your other jurisdiction deserves a proper review. Finally, if your other nationality must be given up under that state's law, the renunciation procedure is separate and should be planned rather than improvised. Turkish law itself does not require renunciation for this route, as the conditions guide notes.