A Syrian engineer who couldn't read the Turkish query page built an app that helps Arabs check their citizenship progress: Marahel and the small business of "government queue lookup"
What it is Enter your application number and birthday to see what stage your Turkish citizenship file has reached. It explains what that means in Arabic, pushes a notification whenever the stage changes in the paid version, and includes a citizenship exam and interview question bank.
Why it took off The official lookup is Turkish-only and sends no notifications. Files can sit for years, so applicants anxiously check again and again. It spent two-plus years building up older users on Android and the web. When the iOS version and subscription launched, those users migrated and paid.
BHow you could follow Don't compete with it in Turkey. Take the package of "native-language interpretation + automatic push + crowdsourced queue stats + exam question bank" and apply it to other identity processes that are hard to use and drag on (German naturalization and residence, Portugal's AIMA, Canada's IRCC, the identity progress of Chinese-speaking users abroad). Start with a native-language website and SEO, then move into support groups.
- Data (updated daily) · Launched 2026-10-29 · Turkey rating 1 · 11-08 charted in 2 stores
iOS · best category chart rank · by store OmanTurkeyQatarData 2026-11-03 → 2026-11-08 (6 days, 6 observations). Lower rank is higher; gaps mean it wasn't charted that dayiOS · Rating count · Turkey Data 2026-11-03 → 2026-11-08 (6 days, 6 observations). Apple doesn't publish download counts; rating growth is a proxy for downloads.
Marahel (Arabic "مراحل", meaning "stages") does one thing: it tells Arabs applying for Turkish citizenship where their file stands, explains in Arabic what that stage means, and pushes a notification when the file moves. It has been on Android and the web for over two years. In 2026 Oct 29 it added an iOS version and started charging a subscription, and a week later it reached #25 on the Lifestyle Top Grossing chart in Oman. The volume is small, but the approach can be copied almost as-is to anywhere official systems are hard to use and a group of foreign-language speakers is anxiously waiting in line.
2023, a government website no one could read
The "About" page of the Marahel website opens like this: in 2023, the founder was going through his own Turkish citizenship application and found the official query site "very complicated, Turkish-only, and it doesn't explain what each stage means".
The app was built by Hussain Abdullatif, an engineer who graduated from the computer science department at Marmara University in Istanbul and is of Syrian/Arab origin (LinkedIn). This is the only app he has on the App Store.
The problem he hit is one every applicant has hit. Those applying for "exceptional naturalization" (istisnai, the route many Syrians take) can only go to the government website, enter an application number and birthday, and see a single line of Turkish status. Then they ask in Facebook groups: what does this mean? How long will it take? Has my file been rejected? In Marahel's website's crowdsourced stats, the exceptional naturalization category covers 22,352 files, and 15,654 of them are stuck at stage four, "security / file review" (marahel.app/statistics, 11-06). Once stuck, a file can stay stuck for years, and these people check again every few days.
What it is
Open the app, enter your application number and birthday, and it queries the official system for the stage your file is at now, explains that stage in Arabic, and lists the original Turkish text as well. Every other feature orbits around this:
- Multiple files: the files of a whole family are stored on the phone, and you can re-query them all with one tap.
- Stats and trends: among app users, how many people are at each stage, and whose file recently jumped from which stage to which. This feature effectively turns the "it moved!" posts from Facebook groups into a readable table.
- Exam prep: a question bank covering 8 topics of the citizenship integration exam, mock exams, and a review of wrong answers; plus 35 common interview questions.
- Premium: monitors the file in the background and pushes a notification whenever the stage changes; shows the history and the estimated time to the next stage; removes ads. On the iOS Turkey store the price is ₺149.99 per month or a lifetime one-time purchase of ₺899.99 (Turkey App Store, 11-06), roughly $3.5 and $21 (est.).
The store description repeatedly stresses one line: "You can check from inside and outside Turkey." That line matters, as the next section explains.
It's not a new one
On iOS it's a new app that only launched in Oct 29, but it's been around for over two years:
| Timeline | What happened | Sources |
|---|---|---|
| March 2024 | Google Play listing goes live | AppBrain |
| around 2024 | Arabic YouTuber عبادة كنجو posts a video, "Track your Turkish citizenship file in Arabic now: an app for citizenship stages for refugees in Turkey", 6,487 views | YouTube |
| July 2024 | Play version hits 10k+ downloads, monetized with ads | Google Play snapshot |
| From Sept 2025 | Website starts publishing Arabic SEO articles, e.g. "How do I know what stage my citizenship file is at?" | marahel.app/blog |
| April 2026 | Play version adds an ad-free subscription for the first time; downloads reach 25.3k+ | apppage.net |
| Oct 2026 20 | Big Play update: Premium with automatic monitoring + push notifications, monthly subscription or one-time purchase | Google Play |
| Oct 2026 29 | iOS launch, updated to 1.3.3 within a week | App Store |
The founder's LinkedIn says "Founder of Marahel (50K+ users)". That's phone and web combined, and the number can't be verified.
How big it is on iOS
Very small. From Nov 3 to 6, it only showed up on country Lifestyle category charts and never reached the overall chart:
| Country | Best rank |
|---|---|
| Oman | #25 Top Grossing (11-06) |
| Saudi Arabia | #95 Top Grossing (11-04) |
| Turkey | #107–158 Top Grossing, #126–157 Top Free |
| Israel | #112 Top Grossing (11-05) |
| Egypt | #172 Top Grossing |
| Qatar | #149–193 Top Free |
Only 2 ratings worldwide (App Store, 11-06). Charting on Top Grossing with that few ratings means people are paying, but the Lifestyle Top Grossing charts in Oman, Qatar and Egypt have a low bar, and a few one-time purchases can get you on them. The rank doesn't tell you how much it earned (inference).
What's interesting is which countries the charting shows up in: Saudi Arabia, Oman, Qatar and Israel, but not Turkey. Many applicants have gone to work in the Gulf, or went back home after Syria's change of government in Dec 2024, while their files are still queued in Turkey. "Check from inside or outside the country" is written for exactly these people.
Where users come from
- Existing users migrating over. The website's "Download" button still only links to Google Play. The iOS version was built for the existing user base. Its first week had almost no ratings yet it charted on Top Grossing, which looks like existing users switching to an iPhone or paying directly.
- Arabic search. The website has stage explanations, statistics, trends and a dozen-plus blog posts. The app name "مراحل" ("stages") is itself a term people search for, and searching "تطبيق مراحل الجنسية التركية" (Turkish citizenship stages app) ranks it first.
- Word of mouth on YouTube and Facebook groups. The YouTube video above is the only influencer recommendation I could find. In a Facebook group, someone answered another person with "there's a program called marahel".
- Ads: I found no evidence of ad buying, and there's no official TikTok account.
Who it's competing with
| Competitors | How Marahel differs |
|---|---|
| Government query page (vatan.nvi.gov.tr) | Everyone has to use it, but it's Turkish-only, only gives status codes, doesn't push notifications, and can't store files. The link was changed in 2024, and people in groups keep asking "where do I check now?" |
| Citizenship query inside e-Devlet | Requires an e-Devlet password first. Turkish-only, no explanations |
| Arabic agency and law firm tutorials (gars consulting, imtilak, dalilarabtr, etc.) | They teach you how to use the official site, but can't check your own file. The goal is to funnel people to agency services. One gars TikTok tutorial has 267k views, so this crowd is looking for answers. |
| Efendim(أفندم) | Comprehensive lifestyle apps for Arabs in Turkey, where citizenship checking is just one entry point |
| Facebook / Telegram mutual-help groups | Lots of people, but information is scattered and there are no statistics |
Searching "الجنسية التركية" (Turkish citizenship) in the Turkey iOS store, it's the only truly relevant result (App Store search, 11-06). I found no copycats.
Why it holds up
- High anxiety, long waits: files can sit stuck for years, and people keep checking. "Push when something moves" speaks directly to that anxiety, and that's the reason to pay.
- The official channels are genuinely hard to use: language, status codes, changing links, and being abroad. Every one of those pushes people toward an alternative.
- The statistics have built up: how many people are at each stage and who just moved. That only gets accurate once there are enough users. A newcomer starting from zero can't produce that table in the first few months.
- The founder is a user too: they understand the stage terminology and are part of the community.
The ceiling is also clear: Arabs applying for Turkish citizenship number in the tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands, so revenue is unlikely to get very big. That's also why agencies won't build it and big companies won't come.
If it were you
One-line verdict: don't compete with it in Turkey. Use this template to find a spot in other queues. In Turkey, this slot already has two years of installed users, search terms and crowdsourced statistics. A late entrant won't come out ahead.
Who it suits: someone who has been through some kind of "status / visa / residence" process themselves, speaks the native language of that group, and can build a reliable query backend.
Who it doesn't suit: people aiming for a mass-market business, and people unwilling to touch grey-area problems like proxy-querying government websites.
How to do it: pick a process that meets all three conditions: the official query is hard to use (language barrier, status codes only, no push), the wait is long (months to years), and applicants cluster in one native-language group. Candidates: German citizenship and residence (lots of Arabic, Turkish, Russian and Ukrainian applicants), Portugal's AIMA residence queue (lots of Brazilian and South Asian applicants), Canada's IRCC, Gulf visa processes, or an identity-progress tracker for overseas Chinese users. The US USCIS already has many similar tools, so it ranks last. Copy Marahel's features: queries with native-language explanations, multiple files, automatic monitoring and push alerts, crowdsourced statistics, exam and interview question banks. Sell both a monthly subscription and a one-time purchase: anxious people buy the monthly, and people who expect to wait a long time buy the one-time.
How to get users: start with a web version and native-language SEO, and name the app after the term that group actually searches for. Show up in Facebook / Telegram mutual-help groups. Find one or two YouTubers in that community who explain immigration paperwork. Marahel reached 25k downloads on Android, and I found no trace of it buying ads.
Is there a window before this gets crowded?: no clear window, but the earlier you start collecting statistics, the better. The statistics are the moat.
What would mean this read is wrong: the government itself ships a good multilingual app that sends notifications; the government starts blocking proxy queries; or the process you pick has average waits of only a few weeks, so people check once or twice and stop opening the app.
Data as of 2026-11-06. Marahel's revenue and conversion rate aren't public. The "50k users" figure is the founder's own claim.
Research notes: competitor table, acquisition evidence, full research report
- Competitors
Name Where Launched Scale How it differs from this one Official vatan.nvi.gov.tr / tckimlik.nvi.gov.tr lookup page Web Already around; links changed in 2024 All applicants Turkish only, status codes only, no push alerts, can't save multiple files. Marahel explains stages in Arabic, auto-monitors, and works from abroad too e-Devlet citizenship application lookup Big-company features Already around Everyone Needs an e-Devlet account, Turkish only, no explanations or stats Arabic agency/law firm content (gars consulting, imtilak, refuportal, dalilarabtr, etc.) Web Years gars' TikTok tutorial, 267k views Tutorials only, meant to funnel clients to services. Can't check your own file Efendim(أفندم) iOS About 2023 Promo video, 89k views A general life/classifieds app for Arabs in Turkey. Citizenship lookup is a side feature, not the focus Facebook / Telegram citizenship support groups Other Years Scattered but lots of people Members share progress by word of mouth. Marahel turns this into structured, crowdsourced stats Citizenship test apps in other countries (Germany's Einbürgerungstest, Life in the UK, etc.) iOS Years Hundreds of thousands of downloads per market Different countries, but it shows people pay for "citizenship + exam prep." Nobody serves Turkey / Arabic this way - Where users come from
- Verified legacy user migration (Android/web → iOS): Play 2024-03 launched, 10K+ → 25.3K+ downloads, founder says mobile + web has 50k+ users; iOS charted on Top Grossing in its first week with very few ratings
- Confirmed Arabic SEO: marahel.app has stage explainers, a stats page and a blog. Searching "تطبيق مراحل الجنسية التركية" ranks it #1, and the app name itself is the keyword "مراحل"
- Confirmed Arabic YouTube creators: Ubada Kenco's intro video has 6.4K views and links to the Play download
- Inferred Facebook group word of mouth: a search snippet shows a group member recommending "برنامج اسمو marahel"
- Inferred Store search: searching الجنسية التركية in the iOS Turkey store returns only this app as relevant
Marahel (مراحل) research report: an Arabic-language app that tracks progress on Turkish citizenship files
- Data card: ios_6479809447, apps.apple.com/app/id6479809447
- Developer: Hussain Abdullatif (solo indie dev, this is his only iOS app)
- Research date: 2026-11-06
Verdict
On iOS this isn't a new breakout hit. It's a two-plus-year-old Android + web tool with an existing user base. This round added the iOS version and launched subscriptions. 2026-10-29 iOS launch: within a week it showed up on Lifestyle category charts in 6 countries. That came from migrating existing users plus a small amount of revenue from subscriptions and one-time purchases. Lifestyle is an easy category to chart in small storefronts like Oman, Qatar and Egypt. Its real moat is a high-anxiety need nobody serves seriously: Arabs (mainly Syrians) applying for Turkish citizenship. The official lookup is Turkish-only, status codes are cryptic, and a file can stall for years.
1. What it is
- Enter your application number and date of birth to see which stage your Turkish citizenship file is in on the official system (vatan.nvi.gov.tr / tckimlik.nvi.gov.tr). It explains that stage in Arabic. You can save several files and recheck them with one tap. (App Store description; marahel.app)
- Explains each stage by application type: special citizenship (istisnai), marriage, general naturalization, and adult birth registration.
- "Statistics & trends": how many users are at each stage, and which files recently changed stage. It's a crowdsourced dashboard built from users' own data. The website's /statistics page shows 22,352 special-citizenship files, 15,654 of them stuck at "Stage 4 دوام/أرشيف (security/archive review)" (marahel.app/statistics, 2026-11-06 crawl).
- Question bank for the integration exam (8 topics), mock tests, and mistake review. Covers 35 common interview questions.
- Paid: Premium is available as a monthly subscription or a lifetime one-time purchase. It removes ads, auto-monitors your file in the background and pushes an alert on any stage change, and shows history plus estimated time to the next stage (App Store / Google Play release notes v1.3.3,2026-11-01).
2. Timeline
| Timeline | Event | Source |
|---|---|---|
| 2023 | The founder went through citizenship himself, found the official site Turkish-only and hard to follow by stage, and decided to build this | marahel.app/about |
| 2024-03 | Google Play version com.marahel went live; the iOS app id 6479809447 was also reserved around this time but not published | AppBrain summary ("available on Google Play since March 2024"); id range inferred |
| About 2024 | YouTuber عبادة كنجو (Ubada Kenco) posted a video introducing "a citizenship stage app for refugees in Turkey" with a Play download link. 6.4K views | YouTube CJyldGKIDPc |
| 2024-07 | Play version: 10K+ downloads, with ads | Google Play snapshot (Exa crawl) |
| 2025-10 | Website starts publishing SEO blog posts | marahel.app/blog/marahel-app-overview (published 2025-10-10) |
| 2026-04 | Play v1.2.1 adds subscriptions to remove ads for the first time. apppage.net shows 25.3K+ downloads | apppage.net/preview/com.marahel |
| 2026-10-20 | Major Play update: Premium (auto-monitoring + push alerts) and monthly subscription / one-time purchase | Google Play |
| 2026-10-29 | iOS launch (11-01, updated to 1.3.3) | iTunes lookup |
| As of 2026-11 | The founder's LinkedIn reads "Founder of Marahel (50K+ users)," counting mobile and web combined | LinkedIn (Exa crawl) |
3. iOS performance (our appstore library, 2026-11-03 to 11-06)
- All on Lifestyle category charts (genre 6012). Never on the overall chart:
- Turkey: Top Grossing 130 → 107 → 142 → 158; Top Free 126 → 126 → 157
- Saudi Arabia: Top Grossing 95 (11-04), 156 (11-05)
- Israel: Top Grossing 112 (11-05), most likely Palestinian or Arab users
- Oman: Top Grossing 25 (11-06); Egypt: Top Grossing 172; Qatar: Top Free 149–193
- Only 2 global ratings (Turkey 1, Qatar 1).
- How to read this: a low rating count that still charts on Top Grossing means people are paying, but in the Lifestyle Top Grossing charts of Oman, Qatar and Egypt, one or two in-app purchases are enough to chart, so you can't infer how much revenue it makes. The user base across the Gulf and Israel backs up the pitch that you can track it from outside Turkey: many applicants have already left Turkey (working in the Gulf, or went back to Syria after December 2024), but their files are still sitting in Turkish queues.
4. Competitors
| Name | Where | Launched | Scale | How it differs from Marahel |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Official vatan.nvi.gov.tr / tckimlik.nvi.gov.tr lookup page | Website (government) | Has always existed; the link changed in 2024 | Every applicant has to use it | Turkish only, shows status codes with no explanation, no push notifications, can't save files; the link changed in the middle, and Arabic Facebook groups keep asking "which is the current query link?" |
| e-Devlet (turkiye.gov.tr "Vatandaşlık Başvurusu Sorgulama") | Website + App (government) | Already around | Everyone | Requires an e-Devlet password, Turkish only, no stage explanations or statistics |
| Arabic-language content from agents / law firms / real estate firms (gars consulting, imtilak, turkey-invest, hajjajj, refuportal, dalilarabtr, Ezel translation agency, etc.) | Websites / TikTok / Facebook | Years | gars_consulting's TikTok tutorial, 267k views | Only image-text or video tutorials; you can't check your own file. The purpose is to funnel people to services. dalilarabtr even warns "there is no official independent tracking app" |
| Efendim(أفندم) | iOS / Android | About 2023 | A TikTok sales video with 89k views (@mhdshkear, 2023-11) | A general lifestyle / classifieds app for Arabs living in Turkey (housing, cars, services, payments). The citizenship lookup is just one side entry, not the focus |
| Facebook groups / Telegram groups (such as ones titled "العالقون في مراحل الجنسية") | Communities | Years | Large but scattered | People share progress by word of mouth, with no structured statistics. Marahel's "numbers per stage / latest movements" essentially turns the group gossip into data |
| Citizenship test apps in other countries (Germany's Einbürgerungstest, Life in the UK, US N-400 prep) | iOS / Android | Years | Several hundred thousand downloads for the leaders in each market | Different countries; it shows "citizenship + test prep" can get paid, but nobody has filled the Turkey / Arabic slot |
Searching "الجنسية التركية" in the iOS Turkey store, the only truly relevant app in the results is Marahel (iTunes search, 2026-11-06). We found no dedicated app doing the same thing, and no copycats.
5. Growth tactics (evidence found)
- Existing users migrated from Android and the web (confirmed): the Play version launched 2024-03, accumulating 10K+ / 25K+ downloads; the founder says there are 50k+ users across mobile and web. The website's download button only points to Play (with utm_source=marahel_web), and the iOS version was added for the existing user base. Early iOS ratings are few, yet it has chart rank, which looks like existing users switching to iPhone or paying directly.
- Arabic website SEO (confirmed): marahel.app has stage explanations, /statistics, /movements and a blog (e.g. "how to know which stage my citizenship file is in"). Searching "تطبيق مراحل الجنسية التركية" and "تتبع ملف الجنسية التركية", the Jina results rank it first; the name "مراحل" (meaning "stages") is itself a search term, so it naturally owns the keyword.
- Early recommendations from Arabic YouTube creators (confirmed, small scale): Ubada Kenco's video has 6.4K views and 24 comments.
- Word of mouth in Facebook groups (partly confirmed): search snippets include a group member answering "there's a program called marahel".
- Store search (inferred): app name + Arabic keywords, with almost no competition on iOS.
- Paid ads: no evidence found; we also found no official Marahel account or promo videos on TikTok.
6. Why it can break out
- Real demand, high anxiety, long duration: many special-naturalization files get stuck at stage four (security / file review), sometimes for years (the official statistics show 22,352 of 15,654 files stuck there), and applicants check repeatedly. "Push when something changes" matches that anxiety, which is the reason to pay.
- The official experience is poor: Turkish only, status codes only, the link has changed, no push notifications; it's harder for people checking from outside Turkey (the app's pitch is "works inside and outside Turkey"; whether the official site blocks foreign access is unverified).
- Crowdsourced data creates a small network effect: the more users, the more accurate "how many people per stage / who just moved" becomes, and it's hard for others to replicate from scratch.
- The founder is a user too: an Arab engineer of Syrian background in Istanbul (computer science graduate of Marmara University) who has been through citizenship himself, knows the stage terminology, and is part of this community.
- Timing: after the political change in Syria in December 2024, many Syrian applicants left Turkey while their files stayed in queues, so cross-border lookup and push alerts became more valuable; the iOS version and the Premium auto-monitoring only arrived in 2026-10, so monetization has only just begun.
7. Differentiation
Compared with official channels: Arabic explanations + multi-file management + automatic monitoring push + usable from abroad. Compared with agent content: you can check your own file, not just read tutorials. Compared with group chats: structured crowdsourced statistics. Compared with all-in-one apps like Efendim: it does only citizenship, plus test and interview prep. This differentiation is genuinely why it holds up, though it rests on a very narrow audience (Arabic speakers applying for citizenship in Turkey, a market of tens to hundreds of thousands). The ceiling is low, so big companies and agents have no reason to take it on seriously.
8. How many people know about it
It's in "small circle buzz" territory: people in Arabic communities and Facebook groups know of it, and the founder wrote "50K+ users" on LinkedIn; no public revenue, no TrustMRR listing, nothing found on X (x-radar: 90 posts in the last 0 days), and no tech media coverage.
9. What others can borrow
A government status tracker that's hard to use + a native-language immigrant community + auto-push alerts + crowdsourced queue stats + exam / interview question banks can be copied to other places, for example: German citizenship / residence (Ausländerbehörde), US USCIS (already crowded), Canada IRCC, Gulf state visas, Portugal AIMA residence queues, or a status tracker for Chinese speakers abroad. Three things matter: pick the process with the worst official UX, the longest waits, and a concentrated native-language group; the queries users run build a stats dashboard over time, which is your moat; sell a one-time purchase alongside a monthly subscription to cover people with different levels of anxiety.
10. Still unclear
- Actual revenue and conversion: the Lifestyle subcategory Top Grossing bar is very low, and iOS chart position can't show scale.
- The "50k users" figure is the founder's own claim and can't be verified. Play install counts come from two sources: 10K+ (a 2024 snapshot) and 25.3K+ (apppage.net, 2026-04).
- Whether the official lookup is blocked abroad, and how the app performs server-side lookups (whether it touches the government site's terms of use, and any risk of being blocked), are unverified.
- Ad spend unverified (our ad library doesn't track it; not finding it doesn't mean it didn't run).
- There is a Saudi company called "Marahel Digital Company" (marahel.ai, AI / SaaS), unrelated, just the same name.
Sources
- iTunes lookup id=6479809447(country=tr)
- marahel.app/, /about, /statistics, /blog/marahel-app-overview
- play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.marahel (hl=en / ar, Exa snapshot)
- apppage.net/preview/com.marahel
- www.linkedin.com/in/hussain-abdullatif (Exa crawl)
- www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJyldGKIDPc
- www.tiktok.com/@mhdshkear/video/7306535487173430534 (Efendim)
- dalilarabtr.com/article/turkish-citizenship-stages-tracking-…
- Our appstore library chart_rank / app_profile (2026-11-03 to 11-06); the googleplay library doesn't include com.marahel; x-radar search "marahel" returned 0 posts