Acquisition of citizenship of the Republic of Turkey

Abstract

Citizenship is a privilege granted by a state generally to persons born in the territory of this state or having family ties with the close relatives who live in the state and/or have its citizenship. Concept of citizenship is one of the important concepts for any state, including the Republic of Turkey, as it determines the persons’ nationality and a number of their rights and obligations in the territory of a certain state accordingly. Thereby, talking about Turkish nationality, first of all it is necessary to determine which laws and regulations govern the acquisition of citizenship and on what grounds it is possible to become a Turkish citizen. However, let us firstly mention that it is needless to say about the urgency of the citizenship issue which can be proved by the existence of the general principle in the law on citizenship: “Every person must have a nationality”. According to this principle, in order to prevent the problem of statelessness states sign multilateral agreements at the international level. The Republic of Turkey, as well as other states, actively participates in signing international treaties on citizenship and takes all necessary steps to perform its obligations under such treaties. Moreover, while passing laws and regulations on citizenship, a Turkish legislator takes into consideration the provisions of these treaties and general principles on citizenship. Our aim is to study the concept of citizenship of the Republic of Turkey (grounds for acquisition of Turkish citizenship), to identify legal problems in this field, including our personal opinion, as well as make conclusions following the outcomes of the study.

Keywords:

сitizenship, the Republic of Turkey, the Law on Citizenship of the Republic of Turkey, citizenship by birth, conferment of citizenship of the Republic of Turkey