How the three years are counted

Last updated: 16 August 2026Legal review: Bayraktar Attorneys2 min read

Where the clock starts

Article 16 requires three years of marriage. The marriage begins at the civil ceremony before the marriage officer, and nothing else counts — an imam nikâhı held two years earlier adds nothing, and neither does a period of cohabitation before the wedding. See the civil marriage procedure for why only that event has legal effect.

A marriage celebrated abroad counts from its own date, provided it has been recorded in the Turkish population registry. Registration does not restart the count: the registry entry carries the original date. Couples who married overseas and registered late still have their full qualifying period, but they cannot file until the registration is done — see registering a marriage celebrated abroad.

The harder half: subsistence

Three years is the easy test because it is arithmetic. The condition that defeats files is that the marriage must still subsist — and the relevant moment is when the Ministry of Interior decides, not when you filed. Since a file commonly takes six months to a year, and longer without counsel, a marriage that ends nine months after filing takes the application with it. What happens then is set out in divorce while the file is open.

Separations, absences and living apart

A separation is not a divorce. The marriage continues to exist and the three-year arithmetic continues to run. But Article 16 imposes a second, independent condition — living together in family union — and a separation destroys it directly. Directorates read the two conditions together, so a file showing three years of marriage and eighteen months of separate addresses fails on the second, not the first.

Absences abroad work differently again. Article 16 imposes no residence requirement, so time spent outside Türkiye does not reduce the three years. What long absences do is make the family union harder to evidence, particularly where the entry–exit records show the spouses apart. Where work genuinely requires it, the answer is to document the arrangement — employment records, maintained joint household, continuing shared finances — rather than to hope it is not noticed. See the genuineness assessment.

Three years, or five?

A spouse living in Türkiye on a family residence permit has a second route: ordinary naturalisation under Article 11 after five years of continuous lawful residence, which family permit time counts toward at full rate. It takes two years longer and adds language and income conditions — but it does not put the marriage in issue, and it is unaffected by a divorce. For couples whose marriage is stable, Article 16 is plainly better. For those whose marriage is not, the five-year route is often the safer file. Both are compared in the citizenship by marriage guide.