Divorce while the citizenship file is open

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

The rule

Article 16 conditions citizenship on a marriage that exists at the moment of decision. Because files commonly run six months to two years, a marriage that ends during that window takes the application with it in the ordinary case. This is different from the three-year arithmetic, which is satisfied or not at filing — see how the three years are counted.

Good faith

The ordinary case is not the only case. Where an applicant can show that the marriage was entered into in good faith — that it was a real marriage, contracted for the reasons people contract marriages, and that it broke down for the reasons marriages break down — the application is not automatically lost. Good faith is a finding of fact, and it is proved with exactly the material that proves genuineness generally: the joint address history, the shared finances, the accumulated evidence of a life. See the genuineness assessment.

The corollary matters as much: a marriage that never had substance produces no good-faith argument, and a divorce in that situation frequently prompts a closer look at the whole file rather than a sympathetic one — including, where citizenship has already been granted, the possibility of revocation under Article 31. The firm's note on citizenship fraud investigations sets out how those files are reopened.

The residence side is more forgiving

Law No. 6458 anticipates divorce in a way Law No. 5901 does not. A foreign national who has held a family residence permit for at least three years, and whose marriage to a Turkish citizen then ends in divorce, may be granted a short-term residence permit. Where the marriage ended because of domestic violence established by a court order, the three-year qualifying period is not required.

Running both sides together

Where a marriage is failing and a citizenship file is open, the family law and immigration questions stop being separable. The timing of the divorce, whether it proceeds by agreement or contest, what the pleadings say about when the marriage broke down, and what is recorded about cohabitation all feed directly into the immigration assessment. A contested divorce in which one spouse alleges the marriage was never real does damage that no immigration filing can undo afterwards.

In practice this means the two matters should be handled as one strategy. The firm's uncontested divorce process is frequently the route where an immigration file is live, and its guidance on divorce and property for foreign nationals covers the financial side. Where the marriage is ending badly, the family law team should see the immigration position before the petition is drafted.

The route that a divorce does not touch

Ordinary naturalisation under Article 11 depends on five years of continuous lawful residence, not on a marriage. Family residence permit time counts toward it at full rate. A spouse who is two or three years into a permit when the marriage fails, and who obtains a short-term permit afterwards, may still reach the five-year threshold with the qualifying time intact — provided lawful residence was never interrupted. That is the strongest practical reason to protect the permit through a divorce even when citizenship by marriage is already lost.