Notary and sworn translator fees in Turkey

Notary and sworn translator fees in Turkey are two separate charging regimes that buyers routinely add together into a single number, which is why published estimates for the same document range from TRY 3,000 to TRY 25,000. The notary side of that number is not quoted at all but calculated: article 1 of the 2026 Noterlik Ücret Tarifesi, published in the Resmî Gazete of 30 December 2025, sets the notary's own fee at 30% of the state duty collected under the Harçlar Kanunu, with a floor of TRY 58.82. A single-signature power of attorney therefore carries TRY 298.00 of official stationery, TRY 307.90 of duty, TRY 92.37 of notary fee and TRY 80.68 for each charged page, and no stamp duty at all, because a power of attorney is not among the papers listed in the Stamp Duty Act schedule. The translator side is governed by nothing comparable: the tariff's charge of TRY 667.67 per page prices what the notary does, and Regulation article 96 records that this money is the notary office's income while the translator's own payment is that office's expense. Sworn status in Turkey is granted by an individual notary rather than by a court or a ministry, and article 96 forbids a notary from using a translator whose oath minute is not held in its own folder, which is the reverse of the German, Spanish and Swedish systems most buyers know. Two rules make an interpreter unavoidable rather than optional: article 74 of the Noterlik Kanunu requires a sworn interpreter whenever a party does not know Turkish, and the Land Registry Regulation makes that interpreter a signatory of the deed with their identity and home address written onto it. The one place where the arithmetic stops entirely is the sales contract, where the notary's fee is 0.1% of value capped at TRY 4,000, a ceiling that binds on any property worth more than about EUR 71,450.

What a Turkish notary does when you buy property

A Turkish notary (noter) is a public office that draws up and certifies documents, and it does not transfer ownership of property. Ownership passes at the Tapu Müdürlüğü (Land Registry Directorate) when the entry is written into the register. The notary produces the paperwork that reaches the registry: the vekaletname (power of attorney), the taşınmaz satış vaadi sözleşmesi (promise-to-sell contract), signature certifications, and certified translations.

Since 1 January 2023 the notary can also do more than prepare paperwork. Article 61/A of the Noterlik Kanunu (Notary Law, numbered 1512) lets notaries draw up the sales contract itself, and that contract forms the basis for registration. The Land Registry Directorate still performs the entry, and it can still refuse the application.

A foreign buyer in Alanya, a district of Antalya province, typically meets a notary two or three times in a single purchase. The first visit produces a power of attorney if the buyer plans to leave the country before completion. The second produces the sales contract or the promise-to-sell. A third visit appears only when something has to be revoked or certified again.

What a sworn translator is in Turkey, and who makes them sworn

A yeminli tercüman (sworn translator) in Turkey is a person who has taken an oath before one specific notary, and no state body appoints them. Article 96 of the Noterlik Kanunu Yönetmeliği (Notary Law Regulation) sets out the whole procedure. The notary must satisfy itself that the person genuinely knows the language, by inspecting a diploma or other documents "or by other means and in a manner that leaves no room for doubt". The notary then administers an oath under civil procedure rules, and records it in a written minute.

That minute has a fixed content. It carries the translator's name, surname, date of birth, business address, home address, level of education, which languages and scripts they know, how the notary formed its conviction that they know those languages, the wording of the oath and the date. The notary and the translator both sign it.

Turkey therefore runs the opposite model to Germany, Spain and Sweden, where a public body confers the title and publishes a list. In Turkey the title travels with a paper folder inside one notary office.

A German buyer arrives expecting a court appointment they can look up. A Turkish sworn translator has no national register to look up, because the qualification was never granted nationally.

Can any sworn translator work at any Turkish notary

No, and the Regulation says so in the form of a prohibition: a notary may not have a translation done by a person whose oath minute is not in its own file. Article 96 requires each notary office to keep the oath minutes of its translators in a dedicated folder, and then adds that the notary cannot use anyone whose minute is missing from that folder.

The practical consequence runs in one direction. If you ask a notary to produce a certified translation, the notary picks from its own sworn list. You do not bring a translator to the counter and have them sworn on the spot for that transaction. A translator who works regularly across three notary offices in Alanya has taken the oath three times.

Article 104 covers the case where no suitable translator exists locally. Where the translation cannot be done at the notary in the place where you are, that notary can arrange it through a notary elsewhere. The 2026 tariff prices this as an aracılık ücreti (intermediary fee) of TRY 18.00 per transaction, so the routing itself is close to free while the translation is still charged in full.

Decide which notary office will handle your file before you commission any translation. A buyer who has a document translated privately and then walks into a notary expecting a stamp is asking for a different service from the one Article 96 describes, and the price of that different service is set separately.

When Turkish law requires a translator, and when it is only practice

Article 74 of the Noterlik Kanunu leaves no discretion: "If the party does not know Turkish, a sworn interpreter shall also be present." The notary has no room to waive it and no room to accept a bilingual friend instead, because the law says andlı, meaning under oath.

The Land Registry applies a parallel rule with a heavier consequence. The Regulation on Official Deeds Issued by Land Registry Directorates, published in the Resmî Gazete of 10 November 2009, requires a sworn interpreter where one of the parties does not speak Turkish, and then makes that interpreter a signatory: witnesses and the interpreter sign the official deed, and their identity details and residential addresses are written into it. The same Regulation requires the deed to be read aloud in Turkish, in everyone's presence, before signature.

Banks and tax offices sit outside both rules. Turkish anti-money-laundering rules govern how a bank identifies a foreign customer, and they say nothing about interpreters, so whether a branch wants one is a branch policy rather than a legal requirement.

Only the registry role carries a legal record. The interpreter at the Land Registry appointment has their name and home address entered on the deed you sign, which means a mistranslation at that moment is attributable. Nothing similar exists at a bank counter, so an interpreter who helps you open an account leaves no trace in any document.

Which documents need a sworn translation

A foreign-language document needs a sworn Turkish translation whenever a Turkish authority has to read it, and the apostille chain is a separate requirement that attaches only to documents signed abroad. The two get confused because they often travel together on the same piece of paper.

Turkish acquisition paperwork splits into four groups by treatment.

A power of attorney drawn at a Turkish notary avoids the entire apostille route, because the document is Turkish from the moment it is created. A power of attorney drawn at a notary in the buyer's own country needs legalisation abroad, then a sworn Turkish translation, then a courier movement, and it still has to satisfy Turkish form rules on photographs and drafting style. Passport translation and the apostille route deserve their own treatment, because the sequence and the issuing authority change by country.

How a Turkish notary's fee is calculated

A Turkish notary's own fee is not quoted, it is computed: article 1 of the 2026 Noterlik Ücret Tarifesi (Notary Fee Tariff) sets it at 30% of the duty the notary collects under the Harçlar Kanunu (Fees Act), with a floor of TRY 58.82 per transaction. The tariff was published in the Resmî Gazete of 30 December 2025, number 33123, and article 16 brings it into force on 1 January 2026.

That single sentence explains why published estimates disagree. The notary is not choosing a price. The notary is applying a percentage to a number that the Fees Act already fixed, and the Fees Act number varies with the document type, the declared value and the number of signatures.

What you hand over at the counter contains four legally distinct items. Article 118 of the Noterlik Kanunu confirms the separation, stating that taxes, duties and valuable paper charges payable under their own statutes are collected against a receipt.

Damga vergisi (stamp duty) is often listed as a fifth item and usually does not apply. Article 1 of the Damga Vergisi Kanunu taxes only the papers listed in its schedule, and the schedule's category for documents with no monetary value contains three entries: arbitration agreements, settlement agreements and tourism quota contracts. A power of attorney is not among them.

The 2026 notary tariff, fee by fee

The tariff runs to sixteen articles and prices every service a notary performs, and the item that matters most to a foreign buyer is the translation charge of TRY 667.67 per page. Every figure below comes from the tariff published on 30 December 2025 and applies from 1 January 2026 until the next tariff replaces it.

Article 3 defines what counts as a page, and the definition is broader than buyers expect. The writing charge applies to the copy retained by the office as well as the original and copies handed to the client, so a two-page deed with one retained copy generates four charged pages rather than two. Certification and attestation annotations carry no writing charge.

Article 4 has a rule of its own that changes the arithmetic. Regulation article 96 states that the translation charge is calculated not on the pages of the document you want translated, but on the pages of official stationery the notary prints after the translation is done. A densely printed foreign page becomes two Turkish pages, and the charge doubles, without anyone having quoted you a different price.

What a power of attorney actually costs at an Alanya notary

A single-signature power of attorney at a Turkish notary costs roughly TRY 1,020 in fixed items, or about EUR 18 at the Central Bank of the Republic of Turkey buying rate of 55.9845 on 28 August 2026, before any translation is added. The figure is reproducible because every input is published.

The buyer in this example grants one power of attorney, signs it once, and the deed runs to two pages with one copy retained by the office.

Then the language layer arrives, and it costs more than the document. A buyer who does not read Turkish needs the deed in a language they understand, and if the notary produces that translation the tariff applies. Two pages of printed Turkish output generate TRY 1,335.34 under article 4, and the Fees Act adds a duty of TRY 104.00 per page on translations and copies of foreign-language documents, giving TRY 208.00. The total reaches TRY 2,564.33, close to EUR 46 on 28 August 2026.

Article 4 halves the translation charge for pages containing ten lines or fewer, and that half-rate is the only density rule in the tariff. Circulating price lists that grade documents as low density or high density and double the charge for a contract are describing a commercial practice rather than the tariff, because the tariff counts lines on a page and pages of output, and stops there.

A third route exists for a buyer who has already left Turkey. A Turkish consulate abroad can draw the same power of attorney, which removes the apostille chain and the sworn translation together, since the consulate produces a Turkish document directly. Consular charges follow their own conversion rule rather than the market rate: the Fees Act records that for transactions from 1 January 2026, Turkish career and honorary consulates apply an exchange rate of USD 1 to TRY 43.05 and a coefficient of 1.850, fixed by Communiqué 99 in the Resmî Gazete of 31 December 2025. Compare the consular figure against the Turkish notary figure rather than assuming the trip is the expensive option.

Creating the legally binding document costs roughly EUR 18 as of August 2026. Putting it into a language the buyer can read costs about EUR 28 more, so the translation runs to more than half the bill. Page count is the only variable a buyer controls here, and granting one power of attorney covering every act needed for the purchase produces fewer charged pages than granting three narrow ones.

Why the notary's fee on a EUR 200,000 sales contract stops at TRY 4,000

The notary's fee on a property sales contract is capped at TRY 4,000 regardless of the price of the property, and the notary may charge nothing else for that contract. Article 1 of the 2026 tariff sets the fee at 0.1% of the sale value, then imposes a floor of TRY 500 and a ceiling of TRY 4,000, and closes with the sentence that notaries may not take any fee beyond the one set in that paragraph.

On a EUR 200,000 apartment the arithmetic is short. At the Central Bank buying rate of 55.9845 on 28 August 2026, the price converts to roughly TRY 11,196,900. A tenth of one percent of that is TRY 11,196.90, which exceeds the ceiling, so the notary charges TRY 4,000, or about EUR 71.

The cap starts biting well below that price point. At 0.1%, the ceiling fee corresponds to a property value of TRY 4,000,000, which is around EUR 71,450 at the 28 August 2026 rate. Almost every Alanya apartment a foreign buyer looks at sits above that line, which means almost every foreign buyer pays the flat ceiling rather than a percentage.

Article 61/A of the Noterlik Kanunu removes two further items from the same contract. Only the title deed duty under the Fees Act is levied, the contract is exempt from stamp duty, and the papers connected to it are exempt from the valuable paper charge. The one cost that does not disappear is the tapu harcı (title deed transfer tax) at 4% of the declared value, which is a Treasury item and is unaffected by where the contract is signed.

What the translator charges, and why that figure is not in the tariff

The translation charge of TRY 667.67 per page in the 2026 tariff is what the notary charges you, not what a translator charges you, and no Turkish tariff sets the second figure. Regulation article 96 makes the distinction explicit: translation charges collected from the client are income of the notary office, and what the notary pays the translator is an expense of that office.

Two different commercial relationships therefore exist under the same word. In the first, you instruct the notary, the tariff governs the price, and the notary pays a translator out of its own revenue. In the second, you instruct a translation agency directly, the tariff does not apply at all, and the price is whatever the market bears.

That is why quoted translation costs for foreign buyers scatter so widely across published sources. The sources are describing different transactions and pricing them as though they were one.

Ask three questions before accepting any translation quote. Ask whether the price is per source page or per page of Turkish output, because Regulation article 96 counts output. Ask whether notary certification is included or billed separately, because certification is a tariff item and translation is not. Ask whether attendance at the notary or the Land Registry is a separate line, because interpreting at an appointment is a different service from translating a document at a desk.

Why published notary fee estimates for foreign buyers contradict each other

Published estimates disagree because they report outcomes rather than inputs, and the same transaction produces different totals depending on value, page count and signature count. A survey of English-language sources aimed at foreign buyers in 2026 produces four incompatible ranges for what is described as the same service.

One specific figure can be tested against the tariff. A widely circulated 2026 guide to Turkish notaries prices translation certification at TRY 300 to 500, and the tariff's translation charge for a single page is TRY 667.67. The quoted range sits below the legal charge for one page of the service it claims to describe.

None of those sources is dishonest. They are reporting what somebody paid, which bundled a translator's private fee, an agency's coordination charge and the tariff items into one number. Reading your own receipt is the only way to separate them, and article 118 of the Noterlik Kanunu guarantees you get one, because taxes, duties and valuable paper charges are collected against a receipt.

Who chooses the translator: you, the notary, or the estate agent

Turkish law bars the notary's own clerk and the parties' close relatives from acting as translator, and it says nothing about a translator supplied by the seller or the estate agent. Article 76 of the Noterlik Kanunu lists the disqualifications, and the list is worth reading as a test rather than as reassurance.

A translator cannot take part in a notarial act where the translator is a party, where the translator is or was the spouse of a party, where the translator is related to a party by blood in the third degree or by marriage in the second degree, where the translator is the notary's clerk or employee, or where the translator acts as agent for a person standing in one of those relationships.

The gap is visible once the list is read carefully. A translator employed by the developer selling the apartment falls outside every one of those categories. The Land Registry Regulation leaves the same gap, because it requires a sworn interpreter and makes them a signatory of the deed without saying who supplies them.

The practical answer runs against the interest of any agency, including ours. Whoever interprets the deed is explaining the terms that decide what you end up owning, and the tariff prices that person's attendance in the low hundreds of lira against a purchase price in six figures. Engaging them yourself removes the one arrangement worth avoiding, where the only person in the room who can tell you what the Turkish text says is paid by the other side.

What the translator's signature commits them to

Article 103 of the Noterlik Kanunu requires the notary's translation annotation to carry the translator's identity and address, dated, signed and sealed by the notary, so a wrong translation has a traceable author. The annotation names one person and ties them to one rendering of one document, which is what makes a translation reviewable months later.

At the Land Registry the commitment goes further. The interpreter signs the official deed itself, and the deed records the interpreter's identity details and residential address alongside the parties'. An interpreter who tells you the deed says one thing while it says another has signed the document that proves otherwise.

Read the annotation before you leave the counter. Check that a name and an address appear, that the notary's date and seal are present, and that the pages of the translation match the pages of the original you handed in. A translation returned without the article 103 annotation is a piece of paper rather than a certified translation, and it costs nothing to notice at the desk and a great deal to notice at the registry.