Over 71,000 people have benefited from the e-notary service since its launch by the Justice Ministry as part of its digital transformation program for the judiciary.

It took notary works into the digital age, helping citizens receive services online without having to go to a notary office.

The online system supports most of the services offered by a physical office, including contract signings, power of attorney services, vehicle sales, property issues and share transfer agreements.

Some 71,076 people have benefited from the e-notary application to date.

In addition to the digital transformation, the ministry also established new notary offices in 78 districts of 45 provinces last month.

The decision was made with an aim of enabling citizens to access notary services onsite, easily and quickly. Currently, there is no district in Turkey that does not have a notary public.

In addition, notary publics can now process real estate purchase and sale transactions after a law published in the Official Gazette on June 28.

They will be able to make a preliminary contract for the sale of immovable property. If one of the parties requests this contract and pays the fees and expenses, notary officials will be able to annotate the land registry through the land registry information system and conclude a contract for the sale of immovable property.

A secure payment system for notary public transactions and payments using credit cards was also launched on Feb. 3, 2020. The Notaries Union of Turkey, the Interior Ministry and the Commerce Ministry, under the leadership of the Justice Ministry jointly launched the project.

Thanks to the system, citizens are no longer required to pay in cash and cutting the risks of carrying large amounts in person.

Since the application was launched, 20,103 transactions have been made in notary publics with the secure payment system.

Some 11,719,014 transactions were made with credit cards while another 3,750 transactions were made using the fingerprint authentication system.

With secure payment, credit card payments and fingerprint authentication processes, fraudulent transactions in contracts based on payment at notary publics have been prevented to a large extent.

Meanwhile, the "Notary on Duty" application, which offers citizens the opportunity to process their notary requirements on weekends, has also seen great interest.

The application, which was launched on April 6, 2019, was suspended for a while due to the COVID-19 outbreak. But with the normalization process, the application saw great interest from commercial enterprises and citizens unable to process their notary public transactions during weekdays.

To date, 1,418,494 transactions have been made at the Notaries on Duty.