Turkish citizenship to be granted for children born in country
IDLIB, Syria (North Press) – Syrian-Turkish Joint Committee, affiliated with the opposition Syrian National Coalition (SNC), announced on Friday that its proposal to Turkish authorities to grant Turkey’s citizenship to the children – who are born in the country while their parents undergo the neutralization process – was endorsed.
On June 19, Turkey’s Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu said that the number of Syrians who have become Turkish citizens reached 211.000 people and that 120.000 are eligible to vote in elections.
“Previously, the naturalization system relied on granting the child a temporary protection card [Kimlik] if his parents had not yet obtained citizenship. After gaining citizenship, they submit a file to naturalize their child. Studying and approving the file would take time, something that caused troubles for parents when travelling between Turkish provinces,” the committee said in a Facebook post
The problem stems from the fact that non neutralized children would need a travel permit, which could take some time, to move freely with their parents.
Soylu said in a speech given in a meeting of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) in Gaziantep, “Over the last 11 years, 210.000 Syrians have acquired the Turkish citizenship while the number of those naturalized foreigners in Germany reached 1.025.000 people.”
He noted that “more than 700.000 Syrian children were born in Turkey.”