Turkmen Translation

Two things disrupt plans with Turkmen documents: an apostille is not valid, and because the alphabet changed twice, older documents can contain letters no longer in use.

5 min readLast updated 2 September 2026

Short answer

Turkmenistan is not a party to the Hague Apostille Convention. After sworn translation and notarisation, a document is certified by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and then by the Turkmen mission. Obtaining an apostille achieves nothing in this chain.

Apostille: Turkmenistan is NOT a party
Alphabet: Latin, adopted 1993 and revised 1999
Language family: Oghuz group; close to Turkish
Principal risk: False friends and the older alphabet

Not an apostille but a consular chain

Among the countries covered on these pages, Turkmenistan is one of two outside the Convention; the other is Iran. An apostille obtained in Türkiye therefore means nothing to an institution in Turkmenistan, and the classic legalisation chain applies instead.

01
Sworn translation
The document is translated and signed by a translator holding an oath record for Turkmen.
02
Notarisation
The notary certifies the translator's signature. This link cannot be skipped.
03
Ministry of Foreign Affairs
The notary's signature and seal are certified by the Ministry. This is the step that stands in place of an apostille.
04
Certification by the Turkmen mission
The final link is the Turkmen mission in Türkiye. Its appointment calendar sets the duration of this step.

An alphabet that changed twice

Turkmenistan moved from Cyrillic to the Latin alphabet in 1993, but the version first adopted carried some unusual characters. The alphabet was revised in 1999 into its present form. Documents issued between 1993 and 1999 can therefore contain letters no longer in use.

Letters in the Turkmen Latin alphabet absent from Turkish
Letter	Sound	Turkish counterpart
ä	Open e	None; rendered as e
ž	zh	j
ň	Nasal n	None; rendered as n
ý	y	y
ü, ö, ç, ş	As in Turkish	Identical

Letters in the Turkmen Latin alphabet absent from Turkish

If your document predates 1999 we need to check its alphabet. Documents from before 1993 are in Cyrillic and may contain Russian sections as well, which calls for separate knowledge.

Closeness to Turkish, and false friends

Turkmen belongs to the same Oghuz group as Turkish and shares a large part of its vocabulary. The part it does not share turns up in official documents, and because it looks familiar it goes unquestioned.

False friends that cause errors in documents
Word	In Turkmen	In Turkish	Why it is risky
işlemek	To work	To process	Shifts the definition of obligations in an employment contract
düşünmek	To understand	To think	Changes meaning in statements and records
ýaşamak	To live, to reside	To be alive	The two senses collide in residence documents
gutarmak	To finish, to graduate	To rescue	Can be read backwards in the text of a diploma
sagat	Hour and clock	Hour and clock	Context has to decide between duration and device

False friends that cause errors in documents

Name structure and the Soviet inheritance

Names in Turkmenistan may be written either with the Soviet -ov/-ova suffixes or in Turkmen forms. After independence some people dropped the Russian endings, which creates matching problems between older and newer documents.

The patronymic field inherited from Soviet records also persists on some documents. In the Turkish register the father's name is a separate field rather than part of the name, so the translation marks which element is which.

to the Hague Apostille Convention: Not a partyto the Hague Apostille Convention
alphabet change and revision: 1993 / 1999alphabet change and revision
in the certification chain: 4 stepsin the certification chain

Turkmen documents and how we render them

Frequently seen documents
Document	What it is	Our approach
Dogluş hakynda şahadatnama	Birth certificate	Its scope differs from a Turkish civil registry extract
Pasport	Identity document and passport	The internal and international passports are separate
Diplom	Diploma	The supplement is a separate document and should be requested with it
Zähmet depderçesi	Employment record book	Used to calculate length of service; every page is translated
Kepilnama	An official letter issued by an institution	What it attests is explained in the heading

Frequently seen documents

Frequently asked questions

I had my document apostilled for Turkmenistan. Will it work?

Unfortunately not. Because Turkmenistan is not a party to the Hague Apostille Convention, the apostille certificate is not recognised there. The document must be certified by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and then by the Turkmen mission. Getting the chain right at the outset is what matters.

Turkmen is very close to Turkish. Must it be translated anyway?

For an official procedure it must. The languages share a family, but false friends exist and the alphabet contains different letters. The institution also requires a text signed by a sworn translator; intelligibility is not a legal basis.

I cannot find the letters on my 1995 document anywhere. Is that normal?

Yes. The Latin alphabet adopted in 1993 contained characters no longer in use, and it was revised in 1999. Documents from that period therefore look different from today's spelling. Send it to us and we will identify which alphabet it uses.

My document is in Cyrillic. Is it Turkmen or Russian?

Turkmen documents from before 1993 were written in Cyrillic and may contain Russian sections. Cyrillic script alone does not mean Russian. Send one page and we will determine the language and the right translator.

How long does the certification chain take?

A four-link chain takes noticeably longer than an apostille, and the final step depends on the mission's appointment calendar. We therefore suggest planning in weeks rather than days. Tell us your deadline and we will work backwards from it.