Turkey Civil Registration

Lineal Kinship Inquiry
"For a country whose population is a rich mix of different ethnicities, paid genealogy services in Turkey oddly failed to catch up with the rest of the world. Nevertheless, a new e-governance service launched earlier this month changed this.

Within days of the launch, millions flocked to www.turkiye.gov.tr to find out who their ancestors were as the government made the genealogy archives online. It was previously available only to those personally applying to a civic registrar's office. The new service cut the red tape and enabled the public to trace their lineage with just a few clicks.

The "Lineal Kinship Inquiry" service as it is officially titled, offers information about one's ancestors, up to the 19th century. Signed up with their national ID numbers and a free password provided by the citizenship services, users can learn a lot of details about their ancestors, from names and last names, dates of birth and death as well as the town, village or city of origin as well as marital status. As the preservation of civic registers has been a well-maintained practice only in later centuries of the Ottoman Empire, many can trace their ancestors only to early 19th century.


 * Turkey E-services

Births, marriages, and deaths
Civil registration of births, marriages, and deaths began in 1884.

Ottoman Empire -- "Tezkire-i Osmaniye" Personal Identification Documents
These identification documents were issued starting in 1863 and were written in Ottoman Turkish. An example and translation of a personal identification document is found here.