Mixed-marriage Turkish Cypriot loses appeal for citizenship

A Turkish Cypriot born to a “mixed marriage” had his appeal against a denial of his Cypriot citizenship rejected by the Nicosia administrative court on Thursday.

The court upheld the 2007 cabinet decision made under late President Tassos Papadopoulos that children of mixed marriages cannot be made citizens of the Republic of Cyprus if one of their parents are Turkish nationals who entered and resided in the north after 1974.

The applicant had been born in the Kyrenia district in 1995, to a mother who was born in the village of Mandria, in the Paphos district, and a father who was born in Turkey.

He had submitted via his lawyer an application for Cypriot citizenship in January 2019, but the Migration department rejected his application in the October of the same year.

The Migration department had told the applicant his application “cannot be approved as the law does not allow a person whose parents’ entry or stay in Cyprus was illegitimate to be registered as a Cypriot citizen.”

The court also noted that the applicant and his father both hold citizenship of the Republic of Turkey and upheld the Migration department’s decision.