Cyprus to be scrutinised over failure to give citizenship to
Turkish Cypriots from mixed marriages
By Esra Aygin
Aylin is a two-year-old stateless baby.
She has a Turkish Cypriot mother and a Turkish father, who
met ten years ago at university in the United Kingdom. They got married in
Turkey and moved to the northern part of Cyprus five years ago. Although
Aylin’s mother is a national of the Republic of Cyprus (RoC), she has not been
able to pass this on to Aylin. And she refuses to apply for Turkish nationality
for her daughter for political and ideological reasons. Aylin remains stateless
because the nationality of the self-styled Turkish Cypriot entity does not
constitute a nationality under international law. She cannot travel to visit
her father, who is currently working in a third country.
Aylin (not her real name) is one of the tens of thousands of
Turkish Cypriot children, who had nothing to do with past events in Cyprus, but
who are being punished for them.
On Tuesday, January 29, the difficulty Aylin and other
Turkish Cypriot children of mixed marriages face in obtaining RoC nationality
is expected to be debated at the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) – a meeting
under the auspices of the UN Human Rights Council – which involves a review of
the human rights records of all UN member states.
A report submitted to the UPR, highlights that a large group
of Turkish Cypriot children with one Cypriot and one Turkish parent are denied
their right to RoC nationality based on ethnicity. The report underlines the
risk of statelessness for some of these children.
The report, co-submitted to the UPR by the Institute on
Statelessness and Inclusion and the Research Team from Maastricht University,
also explains that although the applicants are not officially denied
citizenship their applications stand pending indefinitely.
The report estimates that some 15,000-25,000 people are
denied their right to nationality in this way.
The report adds that the situation of Turkish Cypriot
children of other types of mixed marriages that involve one Cypriot parent and
one of another nationality remains unclear. According to the report, some
people in this situation seem able to pass on their RoC nationality to their
children, and some do not.
At the end of the report, the authors urge reviewing states
to, among other things, recommend to the Republic of Cyprus to “review and
amend relevant legal provisions and ensure non-discriminatory application of
the law to guarantee the right of all persons who have one RoC parent to obtain
RoC nationality, irrespective of the other parent’s ethnicity or gender as well
as the place of residence and/or means of entering the country.”
According to RoC law, any child of at least one parent who
has RoC nationality should also get citizenship. A provision has later been
added to make an exception in cases where any one of the parents entered the
island from Turkey or is living in the northern part of Cyprus.
Challenges the children of mixed marriages face in their
right to obtain RoC nationality have been the subject of a widespread debate in
Cyprus recently. The Turkish Cypriot Teachers’ Union KTOS is currently
assisting – along with a Turkish Cypriot and a Greek Cypriot lawyer – some
5,500 Turkish Cypriots, most of whom are children, in their applications for
RoC citizenship. In August last year,
Interior Minister Constantinos Petrides appointed a team to work with KTOS to
go through the applications and grant citizenship to those who are compatible
with the law provisions. Initially 420 were submitted to the ministry.
So far, however, there has been no progress at all on the
issue, KTOS head Sener Elcil told the Sunday Mail, adding that they will take
legal measures if necessary. Most of the applications are from individuals with
one Cypriot and one Turkish parent, but some have one Turkish Cypriot parent
and a parent of other nationality. Among the applicants are 32 Turkish
Cypriots, whose both parents have RoC nationality but have not been accepted,
Elcil said.
The report submitted to the UPR by the Institute on
Statelessness and Inclusion and the Research Team from Maastricht University
draws heavily on the field research led by Marieke Hopman and Ambra Borne
conducted from August 2017 to May 2018 in Cyprus. The results were published in
a report titled “Deleted off the map: the child’s right to nationality in in
the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus” in October 2018.
The research, which included around 185 qualitative
interviews with experts, politicians, parents, children and young adults, and
around 30 observations, found that the nationality law of the RoC is applied in
a discriminatory manner towards children of mixed marriages of a Cypriot and a
Turkish national. The research notes that RoC nationality is unlikely to be
passed on to a child if there is a Turkish parent, regardless of the birthplace
or where the marriage is held.
“Authorities in the RoC have explained to us that the policy
is in place because people in the RoC are worried that when unification will
eventually happen, there will be too many Turkish Cypriots compared to Greek
Cypriots on the island, which would shift the power balance. To prevent this,
they have to limit granting RoC nationalities to children of mixed RoC/TR
marriages,” researcher Hopman said.
“The policy not to grant children of RoC/Turkish marriages
RoC nationality is…potentially a violation of both the right to nationality and
the right to non-discrimination.”
It is estimated that there are 17,000 mixed marriages
between Turkish Cypriots and Turks.
The research also found that in these situations,
applications for RoC nationality are not officially denied but are left pending
indefinitely where people are told to come back in a few months – a process
that goes on for years.
According to the research, employees at the ministry of
interior do not give proof of application or a case file number to applicants.
People who challenge this issue legally, engage in court cases that go on for
years.
“All children have rights, simply because they are children,
no matter where they are born in the world, where they live or who their
parents are,” Hopman and Borne told the Sunday Mail. “We definitely hope that
the report will be discussed at the UPR and the recommendations will be brought
forward.”
The Joint Submission of the Institute on Statelessness and
Inclusion and the Research Team from Maastricht University to the Universal
Periodic Review http://www.institutesi.org/UPR32_Cyprus.pdf
For the Maastricht University Research “Deleted off the map:
the child’s right to nationality in the Turkish Republic of Northern
Cyprus” http://www.childrensrightsresearch.com/
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