Annulment and the good-faith spouse

Last updated: 16 August 2026Legal review: Bayraktar Attorneys3 min read

Annulment is not divorce

A divorce dissolves a marriage that was validly contracted. An annulment declares that the marriage was defective when it was contracted — that something was wrong at the start. The grounds are set out in the Civil Code and divide into absolute grounds, which the public prosecutor may raise and which cannot be cured, and relative grounds, which only a spouse may raise and which are subject to time limits.

The firm's guide to annulment of marriage in Türkiye sets out the grounds and procedure in full.

The good-faith rule

Turkish nationality law addresses the obvious problem directly. If citizenship acquired through marriage fell away automatically whenever the marriage was annulled, a foreign spouse deceived by a bigamous partner would lose their nationality because of the other party's wrongdoing. The law does not do that: where the marriage through which citizenship was acquired is annulled, the foreign spouse who acted in good faith retains it.

Good faith here means the ordinary thing — that you did not know, and could not reasonably have known, of the defect, and that you married for the reasons you say you did. It is a factual finding, and it is established with the same evidence that establishes a genuine relationship generally: the shared address history, the accumulated finances, the family and social record. See the genuineness assessment.

If the application is still pending

The good-faith rule speaks to citizenship already acquired. Where an annulment occurs while an Article 16 application is still pending, the marriage no longer subsists and the application faces the same difficulty as one interrupted by divorce — with the same good-faith answer available, and the same evidential burden. The residence side is dealt with separately: a spouse who has held a family residence permit for three years has options that do not depend on the marriage surviving.

Children

Children of an annulled marriage are treated as children born of a valid marriage. Their status, and their Turkish citizenship where one parent is a Turkish national, is unaffected — see children, descent and the marriage route. Custody, maintenance and parental responsibility are decided as they would be on a divorce.

What this means in practice

Two lessons. First, the material that protects you in an annulment is the same material that would have supported your original application — which is another reason to accumulate it as the marriage goes along rather than to assemble it when something goes wrong. Second, annulment proceedings and immigration proceedings talk to each other: findings made in the family court about when and why the marriage was contracted will be read by the administration. Where both are in play, they need to be run as one strategy, which is what the firm's family and immigration practice is structured to do.