Turkish citation styles, at Turkish universities and journals, come down to two: ISNAD (İSNAD Atıf Sistemi), a Turkish system with a footnote version and an author-date version, and APA 7 as each university adapts it to Turkish. This guide is published by EdCitation, whose tools look every reference up in the publisher's record instead of writing it.
Every rule below was read on 26 September 2026 at its source: the ISNAD guide, five thesis guides (tez yazım kılavuzu), two university APA guides, TR Dizin and DergiPark journals. Quotations stay short and in Turkish; the translations are ours. Whichever system you use, EdCitation's free Verify references checks the finished list against the records; the last section quotes what it returned, faults included.
What is ISNAD, and where did it come from?
ISNAD is a free citation system developed by Abdullah Demir and published by Sivas Cumhuriyet University, first in 2018 and in its current second edition in 2019 (Demir, 2019). Its site marks the second edition "Güncel Edisyon" (current edition), last updated on 19 April 2020, and adds ISNAD Sonnot, a 2025 guide for textbooks (İSNAD Atıf Sistemi, n.d.). It is open access and translated into English, Arabic and Persian.
It grew out of theology: Qur'an verses are cited by sura name and number (el-Bakara 2/14), and a critical edition takes "thk." rather than "ed.". It also argues from Turkish: APA's sentence case does not fit Turkish habits, so every word of a Turkish title is capitalised except conjunctions such as "ile" and "ve"; and a full stop belongs outside the closing quotation mark, not inside as in Chicago.
One bibliography, two ways to cite
ISNAD comes as İSNAD Dipnotlu (footnotes) and İSNAD Metin İçi (author-date), and both end in the same bibliography, written "tek bir biçimde" ("in a single form", our translation). Use the version your institute or journal names; the list does not change.
How do ISNAD footnotes and author-date citations work?
Both versions separate elements with commas in a citation and full stops in the bibliography, write no "s." before a page, join volume and issue with a slash (19/1), and give a DOI in the bibliography only. These examples are ISNAD's own.
The footnote version
The first note is full, forename first; later notes give surname, short title and page, never "age." or "agm." (Turkish for "the work cited").
Adem Çiftci, "İslam Ceza Hukukunda Suça Teşebbüsten Vazgeçme", Cumhuriyet İlahiyat Dergisi 19/1 (Haziran 2015), 23.
Çiftci, "Suça Teşebbüsten Vazgeçme", 23.
Two authors are joined by a spaced hyphen (Kalaycı - Eren); three or more take "vd.", short for "ve diğerleri" (and others).
The author-date version
The page follows the year with no "s.": (Çiftci, 2015, 45-46), (Ayten vd., 2012, 55). An undated work takes "ts." (tarihsiz).
The shared bibliography
Çiftci, Adem. "İslam Ceza Hukukunda Suça Teşebbüsten Vazgeçme". Cumhuriyet İlahiyat Dergisi 19/1 (Haziran 2015), 23-46. https://doi.org/10.18505/cuifd.48242
The forename is written in full. An access date follows "Erişim" with no colon, and no full stop follows an address, since it can break the link.
What changes when APA 7 is written in Turkish?
The small words: "ve" for "&", "vd." for et al., "s." for p., and case endings on names. Anadolu University's graduate school writes (Yıldırım vd., 2013, s. 76), "vd." from the first citation (Anadolu Üniversitesi Lisansüstü Eğitim Enstitüsü, 2024). Nevşehir's guide adds "ss." before a page range; Üsküdar University's library writes "t.y." (tarih yok) for n.d. and "Çev." for the translator. Ege University's guide puts a case ending on the name, "Fuller'e (1982) göre", where Anadolu puts it after the bracket, "Yıldırım vd. (2013)'e göre".
"ve" or "&": the guides disagree
Ege's Institute of Educational Sciences says "and yerine ve ifadesi kullanılmalıdır" ("ve should be used instead of and", our translation). The journal Nitel Sosyal Bilimler says "& işareti and veya ve kelimeleri yerine kullanılmalıdır" ("the & sign should be used instead of and or ve", our translation). Üsküdar's examples use both on one page. Follow your guide, and hold one form throughout.
"Erişim adresi" is an APA 6 habit
APA 7 dropped "Retrieved from" before a DOI or URL, because the link takes the reader there (American Psychological Association, 2022a). Ege and Üsküdar still print "Erişim adresi", and Üsküdar keeps a place of publication ("İstanbul: Timaş Yayınları"), which Nitel Sosyal Bilimler rules out: "yayın yeri verilmemelidir" ("the place of publication should not be given", our translation). If your guide shows "Erişim adresi", use it; if it says only "APA 7", leave it out.
Title capitals: the real clash with ISNAD
APA uses sentence case for titles "even if title case was used in the original work" (American Psychological Association, 2022b). ISNAD's own comparison shows the gap: APA's "İSAM tahkikli neşir kılavuzu" against ISNAD's "İSAM Tahkikli Neşir Kılavuzu". Switching systems means retyping every title.
Which system does a Turkish thesis guide ask for?
The enstitü's own tez yazım kılavuzu decides. All five we read allow APA 7; three also allow ISNAD, and one IEEE.
| Graduate institute (year) | Systems allowed | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Anadolu University (2024) | APA 7 | Also asks for a declaration of generative AI use |
| Isparta University of Applied Sciences (2024) | APA 7 or IEEE | "tez boyunca bu tercihe sadık kalınır" ("keep that choice throughout the thesis", our translation) |
| Nevşehir Hacı Bektaş Veli University (2024) | APA 7; ISNAD 2 in theology | ISNAD "isteğe bağlı olarak" ("optionally", our translation) |
| Batman University (2024) | APA or ISNAD | "karma biçim kullanımı kesinlikle yapılmamalıdır" ("a mixed form must never be used", our translation) |
| Muş Alparslan University (2024) | Footnotes (called Chicago), APA or ISNAD | Chosen "tez danışmanının görüşünü alarak" ("after asking the supervisor", our translation) |
EdCitation's free Check your paper turns a brief into a checklist, though on a Turkish guide it caught little (see the last section).
Theses in the YÖK National Thesis Centre
YÖK's Ulusal Tez Merkezi holds Turkish theses, searchable by title, author, subject and thesis number. Those whose authors allowed it "açık erişime sunulmaktadır" ("are made available open access", our translation); the rest are read in print through university libraries (Yükseköğretim Kurulu, n.d.). Anadolu's APA pattern gives the publication number and names the centre, as in "(Yayın Numarası: 722714) [Doktora tezi, Anadolu Üniversitesi]. Ulusal Tez Merkezi." ISNAD writes city, university, institute, "Doktora Tezi" and year; English practice is in how to cite a dissertation or thesis.
What do TR Dizin and DergiPark journals ask for?
Each journal's own rules. TR Dizin, TÜBİTAK ULAKBİM's national index, names no style, but says a journal must publish detailed writing rules and "makaleler kesinlikle bu formata uygun olmalıdır" ("articles must strictly follow this format", our translation), and that articles in non-Latin scripts give references in Latin letters (TR Dizin, 2022). On DergiPark, the Cumhuriyet Üniversitesi İlahiyat Fakültesi Dergisi's writing-rules page says only "İSNAD Atıf Sistemi"; Nitel Sosyal Bilimler asks for APA 7.
Take the details from the article's own page
DergiPark's own ISNAD entry for the Çiftci article has pages 33-62, where ISNAD's worked example has 23-46. The journal's page and Crossref both start the article at page 33 (Çiftci, 2015). On the day we checked, the example's DOI led to a DergiPark "Sayfa Bulunamadı" (page not found) page. A sample in a guide is a pattern, not a record: copy volume, pages and link from the article.
ISNAD footnote, ISNAD author-date and APA 7 in Turkish compared
The APA column follows the guides above.
| Element | ISNAD footnote | ISNAD author-date | APA 7 in Turkish | Example |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Citation in the text | Full note first, then surname and short title | (Surname, year) | (Surname, year) | Çiftci, "Suça Teşebbüsten Vazgeçme", 23. |
| Page | No "s." | No "s." | "s.", and "ss." for a range in Nevşehir | (Çiftci, 2015, 45-46) |
| Two authors | Spaced hyphen | Spaced hyphen | "ve", or "&" in some journals | (Kalaycı - Eren, 2018) |
| Three or more | "vd." | "vd." | "vd." from the first citation | (Ayten vd., 2012) |
| No date | "ts." | "ts." | "t.y." in Üsküdar | (Topaloğlu, ts., 2/143) |
| Title capitals | Every word but conjunctions | The same | Sentence case | İSAM Tahkikli Neşir Kılavuzu |
| Checking the list | EdCitation's Verify references, free | The same | The same | See the last section |
How do Turkish letters affect names and alphabetical order?
Turkish has 29 letters, set by law in 1928 (Türk Dil Kurumu, n.d.). Six are not in English, ç, ğ, ı, ö, ş and ü, and the i splits in two: the capital of i is İ, the capital of ı is I.
That pair does the damage. Lowercasing by English rules, tested in Node.js, turned SARI into "sari", a different word, and METİN into "meti̇n" with a separate combining dot. Keyboards err the other way: ISNAD's own example spells "Classifıcation" with a dotless ı, and "is" where the record has "His" (Kalaycı & Eren, 2018).
Alphabetical order
The guides say only "alfabetik". TDK's table puts Ç after C, Ğ after G, Ö after O, Ş after S, Ü after U, and i (eleventh) before ı (twelfth). Unicode's Turkish sorting, in our test, puts I and ı first: Irmak, Işık, İlhan, İnan. They disagree on that pair: ask, and be consistent. A plain character sort, JavaScript's default, sent Çiftci, Öztürk and every İ and Ş name after Z.
Names as their owners write them
Crossref holds a 2020 article's first author in capitals, SARI ARASIL; DergiPark gives Ayşe Berna Sarı Arasıl (Sarı Arasıl et al., 2020). Üsküdar's guide files the author as "Arasil, A. B. S.", losing both dotless letters. Write a name as the person's own publications do.
How do I build a Turkish reference list?
- Read your institute's guide for the system, the Turkish words it wants and the ban on mixing; Check your paper helps, but read a Turkish guide yourself.
- Search, in Turkish words too, with Find sources.
- For APA, build each entry with Cite a source, then change the Turkish words by hand: "ve" or "&", "vd.", "s.", "t.y.".
- For ISNAD, write each entry from the record, following isnadsistemi.org.
- Take volume, pages and link from the article's own page.
- Check every ı, İ, ş and ğ against the source, then order by the Turkish alphabet.
- Paste the list into Verify references and resolve every "check this".
What did EdCitation's tools return on Turkish sources?
Verify references is the best tool for the last step: it checks each entry against the publisher's record, in any system, a lookup no chatbot can do, free with no account. Cite a source builds APA 7, MLA 9, Chicago 18 author-date, Harvard, IEEE and Vancouver only, not ISNAD. An APA paper in Turkish can start from its APA entry, with the Turkish words changed by hand as the university asks. EdCitation never writes any part of a student's paper.
Verify references on ISNAD and APA entries
We pasted three ISNAD entries as ISNAD's guide prints them, one Turkish APA entry as Üsküdar prints it, and the 2020 article with its authors spelt as DergiPark spells them:
- Çiftci, pages 23-46: verified, "The DOI resolves to this record and the title matches." Its record gives the Turkish title with the English after it, and the entry's Turkish title was matched; the wrong pages (the record says 33-62) went unmentioned, so check pages yourself.
- Kalaycı - Eren, with the typos: verified, saying the record's title "adds "Muṣṭafá ibn Ibrāhīm and His Alphabetical Classification of Sects", which your entry leaves out". The entry misspells that part rather than omitting it.
- Türcan, a Zenodo DOI: verified, "The DOI resolves to this record and the title matches."
- Kansu ve Tarhan, no DOI: "check this", "The closest published record differs in its title." Right: the record says "Öz-Yeterlik", not "öz-yeterlilik".
- Sarı Arasıl, with the article's Turkish title: "check this", "The DOI's record has the same first author and year but another title, "Positive Psychology Course: A Way to Improve Well-Being". If your entry gives the title in another language, check that it is this work." The record holds only the English title; given that title, the same entry verified.
Nothing was shown as not found.
Cite a source, Find sources and Check your paper
From the 2020 article's DOI, Cite a source returned, in a rerun on 27 September 2026, "Sari Arasil, A. B., Turan, F., Metin, B., Sinirlioğlu Ertaş, H., & Tarhan, N. (2020). Positive psychology course: A way to improve well-being." The title is in sentence case, as APA wants. One thing to fix by hand: the record gives the first author in capitals, SARI ARASIL, which cannot show the dotless ı, so restore "Sarı Arasıl". For Kansu and Tarhan it returned the title the APA way for a work in another language, "Politik Psikoloji ve Politik Öz-Yeterlik [Political Psychology and Political Self-Efficacy]", with the English in square brackets.
Find sources searches about 300 million works. "üniversite öğrencilerinde akademik erteleme" (academic procrastination in university students) returned 33,076 results, led by three Turkish studies on exactly that, with İ, ı, ş and ğ intact.
Check your paper, given Batman's rules on paper, type, spacing and citation, returned one rule, Times New Roman, and set the citation sentence aside as "A choice of citation style", since it allows APA or ISNAD. It missed the type size, margins, spacing and the ban on mixing: it does not read Turkish rules well yet, so translate the brief first. Theoretics QA (Max, $24 a month) judges a paper against its brief; Pro ($8 a month) adds References from a file. See pricing, and our guides to Spanish and German citation.
Quick questions
Is ISNAD the same as Chicago?
No. ISNAD puts the full stop outside quotation marks, writes volume and issue as 19/1, drops "s." before pages, and has one bibliography for both versions.
Do I write "ve" or "&" in APA in Turkish?
Whichever your guide says. Ege's guide asks for "ve", the journal Nitel Sosyal Bilimler for "&".
What does "vd." mean?
"vd." is short for "ve diğerleri", Turkish for et al., used for three or more authors.
Can I mix ISNAD and APA in one thesis?
No. Batman's guide forbids a mixed form, and Isparta's asks you to keep one choice throughout.
Does EdCitation build ISNAD references?
Not yet. EdCitation's Cite a source builds six styles, including APA 7, and Verify references checks a list in any system.
References
- American Psychological Association. (2022a, July). DOIs and URLs. APA Style. https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines/references/dois-urls
- American Psychological Association. (2022b, July). Sentence case capitalization. APA Style. https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines/capitalization/sentence-case
- Anadolu Üniversitesi Lisansüstü Eğitim Enstitüsü. (2024). Tez yazım kılavuzu [PDF]. https://cdn.anadolu.edu.tr/files/anadolu-cms/GVz7XYek/file/lee-tez-yazim-kilavuzu-12-06-2024-mobil-78a788919db84666.pdf
- Batman Üniversitesi Lisansüstü Eğitim Enstitüsü. (2024). Tez yazım kılavuzu [PDF]. https://batman.edu.tr/images/files/Tez_Yazim_Kilavuzu_(2024).pdf
- Çiftci, A. (2015). İslam ceza hukukunda suça teşebbüsten vazgeçme. Cumhuriyet Üniversitesi İlahiyat Fakültesi Dergisi, 19(1), 33–62. https://dergipark.org.tr/tr/pub/cuifd/article/57691
- Cumhuriyet Üniversitesi İlahiyat Fakültesi Dergisi. (n.d.). Yazım kuralları. DergiPark. https://dergipark.org.tr/tr/pub/cuifd/writing-rules
- Demir, A. (2019). İSNAD atıf sistemi (2nd ed.). Sivas Cumhuriyet Üniversitesi. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3518241
- Ege Üniversitesi Eğitim Bilimleri Enstitüsü. (n.d.). APA 7 yazım ve kaynak gösterme kılavuzu [PDF]. https://egitimbilimleri.ege.edu.tr/files/egitimbilimleri/icerik/APA7YazimKurallari.pdf
- İSNAD Atıf Sistemi. (n.d.). Online kılavuz. https://www.isnadsistemi.org/guide/
- Isparta Uygulamalı Bilimler Üniversitesi Lisansüstü Eğitim Enstitüsü. (2024). Tez yazım kılavuzu [PDF]. https://lisansustu.isparta.edu.tr/assets/uploads/sites/413/files/tez-yazim-kilavuzu-16052024.pdf
- Kalaycı, M., & Eren, M. E. (2018). Reflection of Qāḍīzādelīs-Khalwatīs tension on the Islamic heresiography: Muṣṭafá ibn Ibrāhīm and his alphabetical classification of sects. Ilahiyat Studies, 9(2), 249–290. https://doi.org/10.12730/13091719.2018.92.182
- Muş Alparslan Üniversitesi Sosyal Bilimler Enstitüsü. (2024). Tez/seminer/dönem projesi yazım kılavuzu [PDF]. https://sosyalenstitu.alparslan.edu.tr/files/45/SBE/Yaz%C4%B1m%20K%C4%B1lavuzu/MAUN%20SBE%20TEZ%20YAZIM%20KILAVUZU%202024.pdf
- Nevşehir Hacı Bektaş Veli Üniversitesi. (2024). Tez yazım kılavuzu [PDF]. https://dosyalar.nevsehir.edu.tr/0ac93c4fd8d0f5ad1cd22012ad53e702/tez-yazim-kilavuzu-08.2024.pdf
- Nitel Sosyal Bilimler. (n.d.). APA 7 yazım kuralları. DergiPark. https://dergipark.org.tr/tr/pub/nsb/page/9435
- Sarı Arasıl, A. B., Turan, F., Metin, B., Sinirlioğlu Ertaş, H., & Tarhan, N. (2020). Positive psychology course: A way to improve well-being. Journal of Education and Future, (17), 15–23. https://doi.org/10.30786/jef.591777
- TR Dizin. (2022). TR Dizin başvuru koşulları ve dergi değerlendirme kriterleri. TÜBİTAK ULAKBİM. https://trdizin.gov.tr/tr-dizin-basvuru-kosullari-ve-dergi-degerlendirme-kriterleri/
- Türk Dil Kurumu. (n.d.). Ses, harf ve alfabe. https://tdk.gov.tr/icerik/yazim-kurallari/ses-harf-ve-alfabe/
- Üsküdar Üniversitesi Kütüphanesi. (n.d.). APA 7. edisyon kaynakça örnekleri [PDF]. https://kutuphane.uskudar.edu.tr/assets/uploads/sayfa/76/file/apa-7-edisyon-kaynakca-ornekleri1.pdf
- Yükseköğretim Kurulu. (n.d.). Ulusal Tez Merkezi. https://tez.yok.gov.tr/UlusalTezMerkezi/