Turkish court gives citizenship to Spanish woman despite divorce from Turk

İsmail Saymaz - ISTANBUL

A Turkish court has ruled that a Spanish woman was eligible for Turkish citizenship although she had been divorced with the Turkish man in two years. 

Maria Rosa Garcia Torres, 51, had met the 55-year-old Turkish man, who was unidentified, on the Internet in 2010.

The couple was married in 2012 and Torres moved to the western Turkish province of Eskişehir and applied for Turkish citizenship.

Their marriage did not go well due to the man’s alcoholism and violence. He was sentenced to jail for beating the woman in 2014 and Torres filed for divorce.

Meanwhile, Turkey’s Interior Ministry rejected the woman’s application for citizenship, citing the divorce and the legal requirement to be married to a Turkish citizen for at least three years.

In a landmark ruling for similar cases in Turkey, the Ankara Fourth Administrative Court annulled the ministry’s decision, stressing that Torres “could not be liable for her husband’s failure in fulfilling nuptial responsibilities.”

The Ankara Regional Administrative Court recently approved the lower court’s decision and issued Torres a Turkish passport.