"When I lost my ID, I went to a civil registry in İstanbul to get a new one. They gave me an ID card and it showed me as being married. I got crazy and I did not take it. I shouted and made a mess there," Ümit A. explains. "I went to the Tuzla office. And this time they gave this one. It, too, identified me as married."
Ümit wants to get rid of his married status. He does not even remember the face of his wife, Alexandra, a Romanian citizen. The only day he saw her was the day they got married, neither before nor after. He says when he agreed to get married to a woman he didn't known, he was once again high. He was living on the streets in 2003, the year he got married, and he still does. At that time someone approached him and asked him if he wanted to make some money. He agreed and took YTL 100. Then he was taken to a location in Cihangir on May 15, 2003 where his picture was taken, he handed over his ID card and he signed a form. Ümit A. claims that the man promised to come back three months later and pay more. "I waited every day, they didn't show up," he says.
He changed his ID card himself. He scraped off the part labeled "married" and wrote "single." But that does not change his marital status under the law; he is still married to Alexandra, who was born on May 29, 1983, in Cernavoda, Romania. Just five days after they got married, Alexandra A. obtained Turkish citizenship as per the naturalization laws applicable at that time. Under the former naturalization law, any foreign woman who married a Turkish citizen was able to get Turkish citizenship. Later the law was amended to include additional requirements: being "actively married" to a Turkish citizen for at least three years, living together, refraining from activities unsuitable for marriage and not being involved in activities against public order and morality.
The law was changed because Turkey was becoming center for trafficking women. But it wasn’t changed before Ümit A. got married. His wife probably went on to work as a prostitute; she might not even be alive. Ümit A. does not know, nor does he want to know, he merely wants an ID card that says “single.”
Foreign women who marry Turks do not get Turkish citizenship immediately; instead they get a residence permit. The regulations state a foreign woman who is married to a Turk gets a two-year residence permit at her first application, a three-year permit at her second application and a five-year permit at her third application.
Perhaps this is why in Zonguldak, 27-year-old İsmail D., who did not do his compulsory military service because of psychological problems, married an Azerbaijani woman, Sevinç A.. His father says that his son got married without informing the family two years ago, reported the Cihan news agency last week. İsmail D.’s father claims that the ones who organized the marriage promised YTL 500 to his son and that he had applied to the public prosecutor’s office for the annulment of the marriage because his son was not mentally sound.
Ümit A. just wants to be single and İsmail D.’s parents want their son’s marriage to be declared invalid, but another victim of a fake marriage, Gökhan Y. -- who married Valentina H., a Moldavian -- wants a new life. However it is impossible, because he doesn’t know how to get a divorce.
His story is similar to that of Ümit A. He was sniffing glue and he agreed to get married for YTL 100 in 2003. But his was a “group marriage.”
“We went to a textile workshop. We were 16 or 17 youngsters, we did not even see the women we were marrying, we just signed the marriage certificate from Batman. The marriage officer was from Batman, too,” he says.
A high-ranking justice officer who is very familiar with the security problems of Batman told Today’s Zaman that in one of the district municipalities of Batman there are more registered marriages than the population of the town, resulting in several court disputes. He added that some Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) members were using mobile telephones registered in the name of the foreign women.
Gökhan Y. says he was not able to think about what he was doing. “The only thing that I was thinking about was the glue that I would buy. However now I want to get married and I am in love with a girl, but I don’t know how to get a divorce. What if this woman was involved with criminal activities or even has a child who would be considered mine?” Gökhan Y. says. He claims that he was told within a short time they would divorce and would get $3,000. But no one showed up for payment or for the divorce. According to census information, his Moldavian wife became a Turkish citizen 13 days after their marriage.
The common point of Ümit and Gökhan is they both have connections with the Children of Hope Association, an organization that works to rehabilitate street children. Chairman of the association Yusuf Kulca says those fake marriages are part of organized crime. The association is planning to apply to the public prosecutor’s office on behalf of those duped into marriage by criminal gangs.
Kulca says that since his organization became involved in this problem, other street children and adults have called them. Some of them were men at risk: addicted to drugs, living on the streets and unemployed, some of the men had married foreign women for money.
“Turkish citizenship or residence permits should not be that cheap,” Kulca says.
