Whose law decides whether you are an adult?

Last updated 18 August 2026Legal review Bayraktar Attorneys2 min readThe statutory test

Not Turkish law. Article 11 sends the question to the law of the applicant's own nationality, which is straightforward in most files and quietly decisive in a few.

The rule, and why it exists

Personal status — majority, capacity, guardianship — is traditionally governed by the law of a person's nationality in Turkish conflict-of-laws thinking, and Article 11 keeps faith with that. So the question is not "are you eighteen under Turkish law?" but "are you an adult with full capacity under your own?"

Evidencing it is ordinarily a matter of the passport and the civil status documents already in the file. Where the national law is unusual, an expert statement or an official document from the home authorities may be needed, translated and legalised in the same way as the rest of the documentation supporting the application.

Applicants with more than one nationality

Where an applicant holds two or more nationalities, the applicable law has to be identified rather than assumed, and the effective nationality — the one with which the person has the closest connection — is generally the reference point. In practice this rarely changes the outcome, because the ages of majority coincide, but it can affect which documents the file must contain.

Restricted capacity, guardianship and foreign orders

An applicant under guardianship or subject to a foreign order restricting capacity does not automatically fail, but the application becomes materially more complex: the scope of the restriction has to be established under the national law, and the question of who may act arises. Files of this kind should not be attempted without advice.

The condition also interacts with others. Capacity questions frequently accompany health questions, and the two are assessed separately — a medical board report addressing public health is not a statement about legal capacity, and neither substitutes for the other. The overview of all eight conditions sets out how they sit together.

Minors: not applicants, but affected

A minor cannot apply for ordinary naturalisation in their own right. Children are affected through the acquisition of their parents, subject to consent requirements where the other parent is not part of the application — a subject with its own difficulties, addressed in the position of spouse and children.

Children born in Türkiye to foreign parents are a different question again, governed by descent rather than by residence, and acquisition by birth explains where that line falls. Neither route shortens the five years for the parent.