Bulgaria and Turkey pensions: the payment agreement and insurance periods (what is known and what is not)

Working life · Last reviewed: 2026-10-10

What aggregation actually means

In social security coordination, aggregation does not produce a single combined pension. Each institution calculates a partial pension under its own legislation, using the other country's periods principally to reach the qualifying threshold. The outcome can be two separate payments from two countries. Which periods count, and which branches of insurance are covered, depends on the specific instrument that applies.

Where to file

1. 1

   Apply in your country of residence

   As a rule the institution where you live takes the claim and corresponds with the other country itself — you do not file twice.
2. 2

   Pull your insurance records first

   From the National Social Security Institute for Bulgarian periods and from the Turkish institution for Turkish ones. Correcting gaps before filing is far easier.
3. 3

   Prepare identity and status documents

   Citizenship, residence and any name-change records; foreign documents need translation and certification.
4. 4

   Expect a long timeline

   Correspondence between institutions extends the case. Your filing date matters, so get it confirmed in writing.

What typically complicates a file

• •Overlapping insurance periods recorded in both countries.
• •Name spelling differing across documents because of Cyrillic-to-Latin transliteration.
• •Periods purchased or credited under a special national scheme — their cross-border effect is assessed separately.
• •Undeclared work: a period that cannot be evidenced counts nowhere.
• •Invalidity, occupational disease and survivors' pensions, where scope and conditions differ from old-age pensions.

Why no ages or year counts appear here

Pension age, required insurance periods and calculation coefficients are being phased in gradually in both countries and vary by gender, labour category and year of birth. A single number would mislead more readers than it helps. Binding information for your case comes only from an individual assessment by the National Social Security Institute and the Turkish institution, both of which issue insurance-record statements on request.

What the institutions say about Turkey

The information below was read on 10 October 2026 from NSSI and SGK pages. The NSSI page on Turkey describes paying a Bulgarian pension to a person living in Turkey; it does not describe adding together insurance periods from the two countries.

• •Scope: The page covers people who settled in Turkey after 1 May 1989. Payment rests on the agreement between Bulgaria and Turkey on paying Bulgarian pensions in Turkey, in force since 1 March 1999.
• •Application: The person has a bilingual application form completed and certified at SGK; SGK sends it to the Sofia City office of NSSI, and the transfer of payment to Turkey starts from there.
• •Proof of life: A certified declaration is filed every year; the certifier can be SGK or a Turkish official body such as a municipality, muhtar's office, governorate, notary, embassy or consulate. The pension stops from 1 March for those who did not have a declaration certified in January, and from 1 September for those with no declaration certified in July; payment resumes once the declaration arrives.
• •What is not processed: Declarations sent by fax, not certified by an official body, or emailed without a qualified electronic signature; a declaration sent by post must be the original.
• •Payment calendar: NSSI sends the payment list to SGK by the 7th of each month.
• •Treaty list: On the NSSI page of bilateral agreements, Turkey appears as the agreement on paying Bulgarian pensions in Turkey; in the same list, the social security agreements with Brazil (in force since 1 January 2025) and Albania (since 1 June 2024) have lines of their own.
• •Page on granting pensions: NSSI's page on granting pensions under EU regulations and international agreements names the EU member states, the EEA (Liechtenstein, Norway, Iceland), Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the states in the bilateral treaty list; the name of Turkey does not appear on it. Under the regulations the claim goes to the institution of the country of residence or of the last state whose legislation applied, and under bilateral treaties to the institution of the place of residence.
• •The Turkish side: SGK's page on health matters abroad names 19 agreement countries whose agreements cover health benefits; Bulgaria is not among them. The list covers only agreements with health provisions, so it is no evidence about a provision on adding up insurance periods.
• •What we do not claim: The sources read showed no provision on adding up periods with Turkey; that does not mean none exists. For your right to aggregate, ask SGK and NSSI for written information.

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