TCKN. The number every Turkish system keys off, and the two things we can and cannot do with it

Solidus operates no integration with the Turkish population registry, and performs no live TCKN-to-registry match. The term is not-built in our lexicon.

What it is

The T.C. Kimlik Numarası is an 11-digit number assigned once, for life, to every Turkish citizen, at birth or at naturalisation, through MERNİS, the central population administration system the Ministry of Interior runs through NVİ under Law No. 5490. Foreign residents receive an analogous number under a distinct prefix, the YKN, beginning 99.

It appears on the national identity card and on nearly every official document a citizen holds, and almost every Turkish regulatory system keys off it: SIM registration, MASAK's remote customer-identification rule, hotel-guest notification, and e-Devlet login itself.

Authoritative verification of a TCKN runs through KPS, the identity-sharing system. We are not connected to it.

The distinction this page exists to make

A TCKN validates against itself. The eleven digits carry an internal arithmetic relationship, so anyone can check whether a given number is well-formed without asking anyone. Our document reader does exactly that, and treats it as one signal among several when reconciling what it read off a document: the same property it uses for other national identifiers that are self-checking by construction.

That is not a registry match, and the gap between the two is the whole point.

A checksum tells you the number could be a valid TCKN. It does not tell you that the number belongs to a real person, that the person is alive, or that the name and date of birth beside it are the ones the register holds. A fabricated eleven-digit string that happens to satisfy the arithmetic passes a checksum and fails a registry lookup.

Where a Turkish rule requires the registry match, and MASAK's remote-identification rule does: a checksum does not substitute for it, and we will not present ours as though it might.

The Turkish driving licence makes the same point from the other side: its back-side QR code error-corrects cleanly and decodes to a TCKN and a licence serial. Identifiers, not an identity record. Reading it successfully tells you what number is printed on the card, not who is holding it.

The correlation hazard nobody mentions

A single identifier, assigned for life, used by every system in the country, is a perfect correlation key. Every database that holds a TCKN can be joined to every other database that holds the same TCKN, which is precisely the property that makes it convenient for institutions and hazardous for the person it identifies.

This is the case for selective disclosure stated in its most concrete form: a business that needs to know you are over 18, or a resident, or the same person who verified last month, does not need the number that joins you to every other record about you.

The argument is good; what is unverified is our implementation, not the shape of the idea. A credential that withholds an identifier also cannot satisfy a rule that requires the identifier to be checked, so this reduces unnecessary disclosure; it does not replace a lawful requirement to disclose.

What "planned" means here, and why we are not selling it

A registry match is identified internally as something the Turkish market needs. There is no integration, no agreement with any authority, and no date, so on this page it is absent, not forthcoming. Treat it as a capability we do not have. We would rather be judged on that sentence than on a roadmap.