45,000 people acquire Turkish citizenship in last decade

ANKARA

The Interior Ministry has announced that within a decade, covering 2002 to 2012, a total of 45,959 people became Turkish citizens through marriage, while another 191 gained citizenship through place of birth and 1,450 did so based on the Law on Settlement and Turkish Citizenship Law.

The ministry also asserted that citizens in Turkey have become affiliated mostly with Germans, out of all nationalities, followed by Austrians, Syrians and Russians.

The numbers that came as a response to Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) deputy Özcan Yeniçeri’s written motion also revealed that some 82,085 children were born to parents of whom one was foreign in the last decade, Anadolu Agency reported yesterday.

The foreign parents of these children were mostly from Germany. A total of 23,951 children had either a mother or a father from Germany. Austria, Syria, Russia, Azerbaijan, Ukraine, Bulgaria and Turkic republics were next after Germany, ranked according to the highest number of children with a foreign parent.

Moreover, out of 1,450 people qualified to become Turkish citizens, Macedonians took the lead with 887 people, followed by Serbia and Montenegro.