Starting a UK business with Turkish company documents

Two different things people mean

“I want to start a business in the UK with my Turkish company” turns out, on inspection, to mean one of two quite different projects, and they have almost nothing in common. The first is forming a new UK company whose shareholder happens to be you or your Turkish firm. The second is registering your existing Turkish company’s UK establishment, so that the Turkish legal entity itself trades here through a branch or office. The first needs hardly any Turkish paperwork. The second needs your constitutional documents in English, filed at Companies House. Work out which you are doing before you pay for a single translation, and take advice from a UK accountant on which structure suits you, because that decision has tax consequences we are not qualified to discuss.

Forming a new UK company

A UK private limited company can be incorporated online with a name, a registered office address in the UK, at least one director and the share details. There is no requirement for a director to live in the UK, and Turkish nationals routinely appear on the register. What has changed since 2025 is identity verification: reforms to the Companies House regime have introduced verification duties for directors and people with significant control, phased in over time and supported by authorised agents. Check the registrar’s current guidance for what a Turkish passport holder must do and when, as this is still bedding in. Your Turkish documents rarely enter this process at all; what does arrive later is the bank’s and the accountant’s demand for evidence of who you are and where your money comes from.

Registering a Turkish company’s UK establishment

Where the Turkish entity itself opens a place of business here, it registers as an overseas company at Companies House, normally within a month of opening, and files its constitutional documents with the application. The Companies Act 2006 and the registrar’s guidance provide, in substance, that a document delivered to the registrar in a language other than English must be accompanied by a certified translation. In practice that means your ana sözleşme, the trade registry record and, depending on the filing, the accounts, must be translated and certified. The registrar rejects filings that arrive without the translation, and a rejection costs a fortnight.

The Turkish documents, and what each is for

• Ticaret sicil gazetesi — the trade registry gazette entry, showing incorporation, capital, directors and any changes. The nearest Turkish equivalent to a Companies House extract; see the gazette page.
• Faaliyet belgesi — the certificate of activity from the chamber of commerce, confirming the company is trading and registered. Banks ask for this more than anything else.
• İmza sirküleri — the signature circular, showing who may bind the company and jointly with whom. UK bankers read it as a mandate and it saves arguments about authority.
• Ana sözleşme — the articles of association.
• Vergi levhası — the tax certificate, showing the tax office and number.
• Financial statements and bank statements, where a lender or landlord asks for a trading history; see Turkish bank statements.

Banks: the part that takes longest

Opening a UK business account for a company with Turkish owners is the step that defeats most people, and it is not a translation problem alone. Banks apply their own onboarding rules: identification and proof of address for each director and beneficial owner, an explanation of the business, the source of funds, and, where the shareholder is a Turkish company, its registry documents. There is no published banking rule about translations, and practice varies between banks and between branches of the same bank. What we can say is what our clients report: a certified English translation of the gazette entry, the faaliyet belgesi and the imza sirküleri, presented together with the Turkish originals, is what gets a file past the onboarding team. Ask the bank for its list in writing before ordering anything, and expect a wait of weeks.

HMRC and the rest

Registration for corporation tax, VAT or PAYE is done in English on the department’s own forms, so nothing needs translating at that stage. Translations appear later, when HMRC opens an enquiry and asks to see documents behind a figure — a Turkish invoice, a contract, a bank statement. We found no published HMRC wording on how foreign documents must be translated, and we say so rather than inventing a rule; what agents report is that certified translations are asked for during checks. The same is true of landlords taking a commercial lease and of insurers. Certify once, in a form that works everywhere, and reuse it. Where your business will actually trade goods between the two countries, the customs paperwork is a separate subject covered in the trade documents guide.

Timing and fees

• From £10 per page of 1,000 characters, certification included. A gazette entry usually runs to two or three pages, a faaliyet belgesi to one, an imza sirküleri to one or two, articles of association to six or more.
• A typical bank pack — gazette, activity certificate and signature circular — comes to £40–70 and is delivered in one to two working days.
• Urgent handling adds 60 per cent; the economy option is 20 per cent less over twice the time.
• Paper sets by courier from Ankara, £30. No UK VAT is charged.
• Apostilles, where a bank or the registrar asks for authentication, are free in Türkiye and take a day.

Mistakes we see

• Translating the whole company file before asking the bank or the registrar for its list.
• Using a gazette entry from 2019 that predates two changes of director.
• Filing at Companies House without the certified translation, then losing two weeks to a rejection.
• Assuming a UK company solves a visa problem. It does not; business immigration routes have their own rules, and an OISC-registered adviser or solicitor should be asked.

What we do

We translate and certify Turkish corporate documents, keeping company names, MERSİS and registry numbers, capital figures and dates exactly as printed, and rendering Turkish company forms as they are rather than converting them into UK equivalents that do not exist. We can also translate your UK documents into Turkish when the flow runs the other way. We do not incorporate companies, act as a registered office, or advise on tax or immigration.