Turkish Identification Number ( or abbreviated as T.C. Kimlik No.) is a unique personal identification number

National identification number

A national identification number, national identity number, or national insurance number is used by the governments of many countries as a means of tracking their citizens, permanent residents, and temporary residents for the purposes of work, taxation, government benefits, health care, and other...

 that is assigned to every citizen of Turkey

Turkey

Turkey , known officially as the Republic of Turkey , is a Eurasian country located in Western Asia and in East Thrace in Southeastern Europe...

.

Foreigners residing in Turkey at least six months for any purpose receive a Foreigner Identification Number, which is different from the Turkish Identification Number.

Purpose

The purpose of identification number's introduction is to resolve the problems that arise by same names of different citizens and to speed up the information transfer between the public institutions. With the identification number, services like taxation, security

Security

Security is the degree of protection against danger, damage, loss, and crime. Security as a form of protection are structures and processes that provide or improve security as a condition. The Institute for Security and Open Methodologies in the OSSTMM 3 defines security as "a form of protection...

, voting

Election

An election is a formal decision-making process by which a population chooses an individual to hold public office. Elections have been the usual mechanism by which modern representative democracy operates since the 17th century. Elections may fill offices in the legislature, sometimes in the...

, education

Education

Education in its broadest, general sense is the means through which the aims and habits of a group of people lives on from one generation to the next. Generally, it occurs through any experience that has a formative effect on the way one thinks, feels, or acts...

, social security

Social security

Social security is primarily a social insurance program providing social protection or protection against socially recognized conditions, including poverty, old age, disability, unemployment and others. Social security may refer to:...

, health care

Health care

Health care is the diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of disease, illness, injury, and other physical and mental impairments in humans. Health care is delivered by practitioners in medicine, chiropractic, dentistry, nursing, pharmacy, allied health, and other care providers...

, military recruitment

Military recruitment

Military recruitment is the act of requesting people, usually male adults, to join a military voluntarily. Involuntary military recruitment is known as conscription. Many countries that have abolished conscription use military recruiters to persuade people to join, often at an early age. To...

, banking and many others can be carried out more quickly, rationally and reliably.

History

The Turkish Identification Number was introduced on October 28, 2000 in conjunction with the Act No. 3080, which amended the initial Population Registration Act No. 1587, and applied to all citizens born after 1840, dead or alive around 120 million people at that time. It was issued by the 923 registration offices at district level across the country.

From January 1, 2003 on, all public institutions integrated the personal identification number in their certificates and documents like identity card, passport

Turkish passport

Turkish Passports are issued in accordance with the Passport Act from July 15, 1950 to Turkish citizens to travel outside of the country....

, international family book, driving license, form and manifesto they issue to citizens. The Identity Card Serial Number formerly in use was not needed any more and so cancelled.

MERNIS Project

Turkish Identification Number was developed and put in service in context of a project called Central Registration Administration System ,

The idea for the project was born in 1972 after the Population Registration Law was enacted. Following infrastructural works done by the State Planning Organization and later by the Middle East Technical University

Middle East Technical University

Middle East Technical University is a public technical university located in Ankara, Turkey...

, the World Bank

World Bank

The World Bank is an international financial institution that provides loans to developing countries for capital programmes.The World Bank's official goal is the reduction of poverty...

 financially supported the project in 1996 with credit.

The cost of the project amounted to US$35 million. Personal data of 70 million Turkish citizens, 5 million Turks living abroad and 24 million dead were recorded in a databank with the help of the personal identification number using a special software that was developed for US$400,000. Moreover, 23 million records of married, divorced and naturalized people were added giving identification number.

After accomplishment of the initial issue of the personal identification number, it is being given only to newborns and naturalized people.

The MERNİS database is in online service since the end of November 2002, however not fully open to the public for secrecy of private data.

Identification number

The identification number is a unique 11-digit number given by the MERNIS computer on the basis of the citizen's registration record that is kept by the registration office. The number does not reflect any personal information about the citizen. It is not possible to change the identification number once applied.

Validation of the identification number

The personal identification number is composed of numbers only and can not have a leading zero. The rightmost two digits of the 11-digit identification number are check digit

Check digit

A check digit is a form of redundancy check used for error detection, the decimal equivalent of a binary checksum. It consists of a single digit computed from the other digits in the message....

s added to enable error detection.

Numbering the digits from left to right, if the first digit is and so on, the trailing check digits can be calculated using the formula:
10th digit:

11th digit:

Microsoft Excel

Microsoft Excel

Microsoft Excel is a proprietary commercial spreadsheet application written and distributed by Microsoft for Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X. It features calculation, graphing tools, pivot tables, and a macro programming language called Visual Basic for Applications...

formula:
cell A1 =<11-digit Turkish Identification Number>
cell B1 =MOD(10-MOD(3*(MID(A1;1;1)+MID(A1;3;1)+MID(A1;5;1)+
MID(A1;7;1)+MID(A1;9;1))+MID(A1;2;1)+MID(A1;4;1)+
MID(A1;6;1)+MID(A1;8;1);10);10)
cell C1 =MOD(10-MOD(MID(A1;1;1)+MID(A1;3;1)+MID(A1;5;1)+
MID(A1;7;1)+MID(A1;9;1)+3*(MID(A1;2;1)+MID(A1;4;1)+
MID(A1;6;1)+MID(A1;8;1)+B1);10);10)

cell D1 =CONCATENATE(MID(A1;1;9);B1;C1)

Query of the identification number

The identification number can be obtained by the registration offices or online at internet via the Ministry of Interior's portal http://www.nvi.gov.tr/NVI.html.