Forest certification refers to a process by which a forest company undergoes an independent assessment and audiı of its forest management system in addition to government regulations and other requirements. In this paper, we presented the recent developments towards forest certification at national and international level. First of all, forest certification was introduced, its general principles were deseribed and five commonly accepted and preferred forest certification systems were presented and discussed comparatively. Finally, we discussed the potential implications of certification process, promoting the sustainable forest management pracıices, to forest management practices in Turkey in the verge of entering the European Union and suggested few alternatives.