Although there are several routes by which foreign nationals may acquire Turkish citizenship after birth, marriage is the most common in practice. A marriage contracted with a Turkish citizen does not, however, of itself produce citizenship. A foreign national requesting citizenship must first satisfy the conditions listed in Article 16 of the Turkish Citizenship Act. That provision requires all of the conditions listed to be met together.
Even where every condition laid down by the Act is satisfied, the administrative authorities may still refuse the citizenship application. The course open to an applicant faced with such an outcome is to bring an action before the administrative court seeking annulment of the refusal.
In this briefing note we examine the framework for acquiring citizenship through marriage under Article 16 of the Turkish Citizenship Act No. 5901, the application procedure, the documents required, the position arising in cases of divorce and annulment of the marriage, and the judicial review available against a refusal decision.
Conditions for Acquiring Citizenship Through Marriage
The power to grant citizenship falls within the sovereign sphere of States; each country freely determines its own conditions of admission. So far as Türkiye is concerned, the amendment made in 2003 markedly tightened the acquisition of citizenship through marriage. Under the now repealed Act No. 403, a foreign woman could obtain citizenship directly by marrying a Turkish man. The Turkish Citizenship Act No. 5901 currently in force, by contrast, has made acquisition through marriage subject to a series of conditions.
The provision presently applied reads as follows:
Turkish Citizenship Act, Art. 16
“Marriage to a Turkish citizen shall not directly confer Turkish citizenship. However, foreigners who have been married to a Turkish citizen for at least three years and whose marriage subsists may apply to acquire Turkish citizenship.”
Under the Article, the conditions required of applicants are as follows:
- Living within a family union
- Having no circumstance constituting an obstacle in terms of national security and public order
- Having been married to a Turkish citizen for at least three years
- Not engaging in any activity incompatible with the marriage union
As can be seen, the legislature did not regard it as sufficient in itself that the foreign national has been married to a Turkish citizen for a given period and that the marriage still subsists; it laid down further conditions in addition. Those conditions call for examination in turn.
Being Married to a Turkish Citizen for at Least Three Years
For a foreign national married to a Turkish citizen to be able to request citizenship, the first requirement is that at least three years have passed since the marriage.
There is a detail to be noted at this point: the Act does not treat a three-year marital history as sufficient for the acquisition of citizenship. For the request to be capable of assessment, it is essential that the marital bond still subsists at the moment the application is made.
Living Within a Family Union
The recognition of marriage as a route conferring citizenship has, in Türkiye as in other countries, prepared the ground for the spread of marriages of convenience contracted for that purpose alone. In order to prevent citizenship from being obtained through such sham marriages, the legislature introduced the condition of living within a family union. When an application is made, the competent authorities investigate whether the parties are genuinely married and whether a family union in fact continues.
The second paragraph of the Article provides for an exception in respect of this condition. Accordingly, where the Turkish citizen spouse dies after the application has been made, the condition of living within a family union is no longer required of the surviving foreign spouse.
Not Engaging in Any Activity Incompatible With the Marriage Union
The Act further requires the applicant to refrain from activities incompatible with the marriage union. The expression “activity incompatible with the marriage union” has, however, been left abstract, and the conduct falling within its scope has not been indicated one by one. The assessment is left to the competent authorities, which reach their conclusion on the basis of established practice and criteria of general morality.
That said, Article 28 of the Regulation on the Implementation of the Turkish Citizenship Act offers guidance by way of example, and counts prostitution and procuring for prostitution among activities of this nature.
Absence of an Obstacle in Terms of National Security and Public Order
This condition is required in common in respect of all routes to the subsequent acquisition of Turkish citizenship. The reason is plain: public order and national security are two values that concern society as a whole and are placed ahead of other interests.
At the same time, this condition is the point at which the administration is afforded the opportunity to exercise a discretionary power. For a foreign national to acquire citizenship through marriage, there must be no obstacle in terms of national security and public order. Here too, the cases to be assessed within that scope have not been determined by precise limits and have been left, as explained above, to the assessment of the competent authorities.
Persons who satisfy these conditions and are already citizens of another State may also benefit from the provisions on dual citizenship. The subject is addressed separately in our note entitled What Is Dual Citizenship?
How and Where the Application Is Made
A foreign national who meets the conditions listed above completes the necessary documents and applies to the General Directorate of Civil Registration and Citizenship of the Ministry of the Interior of the Republic of Türkiye.
Whether the applicant possesses the qualities required by the legislation is established, within the country, by the citizenship application review commissions constituted in the provinces. In the case of applications made from abroad, the authorities competent to conduct that review are the foreign missions.
A citizenship file is opened in the name of persons found to satisfy the conditions and is forwarded to the Ministry for decision. The request of those whose situation is not found appropriate is refused by the Ministry and notified to the person concerned.
Documents Required With the Application
The documents that must be submitted with an application for Turkish citizenship through marriage are as follows:
- The form petition relating to the citizenship application
- An extract from the civil registry relating to the Turkish citizen spouse
- The passport or an equivalent document establishing of which State the applicant is a citizen
- The applicant’s birth certificate
- The marriage certificate
- The residence permit
- Where there is a final court judgment concerning the applicant in respect of an offence, a certified true copy of that judgment
- 2 biometric photographs
- The receipt showing that the service fee has been paid into the treasury cash office
The Position of Acquired Citizenship in the Event of Divorce
Where a foreign national has obtained Turkish citizenship by satisfying the conditions required, a divorce from the spouse after citizenship has been acquired does not bring the citizenship status to an end. In other words, the subsequent dissolution of the marital bond has no effect on citizenship acquired through marriage. Turkish citizenship at this point bears the character of an acquired right, and developments occurring afterwards do not impair that right.
The Fate of Citizenship Where the Marriage Is Annulled
Where a couple’s marriage is annulled by the court on grounds of nullity (invalidity) governed by the Turkish Civil Code, the foreign spouse’s Turkish citizenship is preserved provided that the parties were in good faith at the time of the marriage. Good faith here means that the spouses were unaware of the existence of the grounds of invalidity at the moment of marriage and that knowledge of them could not have been expected of them.
Action for Annulment Against a Refusal of the Application
As explained above, requests for citizenship through marriage made by foreign nationals meeting the conditions required by the legislation are examined and decided by the administration. In certain cases the administration may rule that such requests be refused on various grounds. The ground of refusal may be that the statutory conditions have not been satisfied, or that the application was made with incomplete or incorrect documents; equally, a negative decision may be taken within the framework of the administration’s discretionary power.
Whatever ground it rests on, a foreign national whose request is refused may bring an action seeking annulment if they consider the decision unlawful. The action is brought before the administrative court of the place where the administration that established the refusal decision is located. The time limit for bringing the action is 60 days from the date on which the refusal decision was notified to the person concerned. The details of the subject are addressed in our note entitled Action for Annulment of a Decision Refusing a Citizenship Application.
Decisions of acceptance or refusal taken by the administration in relation to a citizenship request are, in their legal character, administrative acts. For those acts to be regarded as lawful, they must accordingly bear all of the elements that an administrative act is required to have. As explained in our note entitled Annulment of Administrative Acts, acts found to be defective in any of the elements of competence, form, cause, subject matter and purpose may be annulled by the court.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is representation by a lawyer compulsory before the administrative court?
Under Turkish law the parties may, save for a few limited exceptions, defend themselves in person before the courts; representation by a lawyer is as a rule not compulsory. Within that framework, no requirement of representation by a lawyer is imposed before the administrative courts either.
That said, the complexity of administrative law legislation and the short and strict nature of the time limits laid down in the Administrative Procedure Act mean that conducting the process without a lawyer may lead to errors of both procedure and substance that are difficult to remedy. To avoid the loss of rights in administrative proceedings governed by detailed provisions, it is prudent to obtain support from a lawyer practising in the field of administrative law before any step is taken.
Is residence in Türkiye a condition of the application?
Residence of the foreign national in Türkiye is not among the conditions the Act requires for the acquisition of citizenship through marriage. Married life may be pursued outside Türkiye, and an application may be made in that case too.
Is marriage to a person who later became a Turkish citizen sufficient?
A marriage to a person who subsequently obtained citizenship by a route other than birth may also form the basis for acquiring citizenship through marriage. In that scenario too, it is sufficient that the conditions listed in Article 16 of the Turkish Citizenship Act are met and that an application is made.
How does the death of the Turkish spouse after the application affect the process?
Where the Turkish citizen spouse dies after the application has been made, the condition of living within a family union among the conditions required by the Act no longer applies. In that case the conditions of having been married for at least three years, of not engaging in activity incompatible with the marriage union and of bearing no obstacle in terms of national security and public order remain in force; where the other conditions are satisfied, the right to citizenship arises.
How does the procedure work for applications made from abroad?
In applications made from abroad, certified copies of the necessary documents together with their Turkish translations must be submitted to the consulates.
Following the application, the foreign national requesting citizenship and their spouse are interviewed at the consulate both separately and together, so that an attempt may be made to establish whether the marriage is genuine and valid. The application is concluded by assessing together the favourable or unfavourable impression formed at the interview and the documents submitted.
How long does the application take to conclude?
The most important responsibility falling to the applicant, so far as completion of the process within a reasonable time is concerned, is to submit the documents required in full. Where the documents are produced in their entirety, the process is generally concluded within a range of 1 to 2.5 years.
Independent Legal Assessment
In files concerning citizenship through marriage, the great majority of unfavourable outcomes arise not from a failure to satisfy the statutory conditions at all, but from an inability to establish that the family union in fact continues. At this point the administration places weight on interview records, joint residence records and neighbourhood enquiries; even the smallest inconsistency between the documents submitted by the applicant and the administrative records may be turned into a ground of refusal. Preparation of the file should therefore not be regarded as an exercise consisting merely of gathering documents.
The second area of risk is the broad margin of discretion the criterion of national security and public order affords the administration. In refusal decisions resting on that criterion, whether the reasoning is supported by concrete facts constitutes the principal argument determining the course of the action for annulment.
The headings that should be brought to the fore in managing the process are as follows:
- Documenting, through official records, the three-year duration of the marriage and the fact that the marriage subsisted at the moment of application
- Supporting the shared life with independent evidence such as address, title deed, lease, bank and school records
- Preparing for the interview stage in such a way that no contradiction arises between the spouses’ statements
- Analysing which element the refusal decision rests upon and assessing it in terms of the limits of the discretionary power
- Establishing the date of notification and calendaring the 60-day time limit for bringing an action without leaving room for delay
- Completing translation and certification formalities in due form in applications from abroad
Independent Legal provides advisory services throughout the entire process in disputes arising from the law of foreigners and citizenship, from the preparation of the application file to the conduct of the action for annulment brought against a refusal decision.