Job Discussion Forums

[Baba Alex]

Righ, maybe SOMEONE out there can help me, I got marrried to a Turkish national in London, we then came to istanbul later on (me on a tourist visa), I need to know how to register our marriage with the official turkish dudes. I've heard that my wife might have to go back to London to the Turk Embassy to get our cert. translated, which is a problem, because for some reason the British Government are not letting her have a visa.

Any ideas, links, sympathetic coments or spelling corrections are welcome.

[dmb]

sorry can't help you. I've managed to stay clear of this problem. However, a fiend of mine got married to a Turk in the UK. and it is causing all sorts of problems with the divorce procedeings here. Both now live in Istanbul and are trying to 'legalise' the marriage so that they can get divorced!!!

[dmb]

[Pine]

My husband and I got married in the U.S. in 1999. He's Turkish and I'm American. About 6 months after we got married we went to the "Turkish House" in NYC so I could apply for a Turkish ID card. I was turned down because you have to apply for the card within 30 days of getting married. If you don't, you can never get one. (Hard for me to believe, but we were told the same thing by a half dozen people in the US and Turkey.) Apparently, getting that card is the way to go. You don't have the visa problems and can work legally, which was key because we planned to return to Turkey.

I know you can register your marriage in Turkey, which takes care of the visa problem, but doesn't give you permission to work. To do this we went to the police station in my husband's city with both our passports and his Turkish ID card, which listed his marital status as married. I never ended up registering because they wanted to keep our documents for 1-2 weeks and we were going to need them so we decided to do it some other time.

Hope this helps.

[Pine]

I forgot to ask...
Does your wife's ID card list her as married or single? As far as I know that needs to be done before you can register in Turkey. We filed this paperwork in NYC, but the NY office actually sends it to Turkey to be processed so I'm sure it can be done there.

[Baba Alex]

[gelin]

When I got married in the States all my husband did was to send the marriage certificate into the consulate and everything was taken care of. I realize you're working against time, however, so that's probably not a fast solution. I also got divorced in Turkey and it was not a problem. Guess I should count myself lucky.

I would caution everyone about taking Turkish citizenship, however. Yes, you won't need visas and work permits, but many schools will treat you as a Turk, salary and benefit-wise, too. You are much better not being a Turk, unfortunately.

[calsimsek]

Hi Baba.
If you can get over to the Asian side and go see the Baş M�d�r of the Kadik�y Wedding Office (What can you call it ) I'm sure he can help you he's helped more than a dozen people with mixed marriages. They knows the law better than most, and even has some stuff in English.

[Pine]

Yes, I agree you have to be cautious when making such a big decision. I apologize if I oversimplified it. None of my friends or the acquaintances that I discussed this with (all women) were unhappy with citizenship or found it to be a negative for them. Admittedly, none of them teach. Most have always worked in jobs were they earn wages that are more in line with Turkish wages (but not always paid in lire) anyway. The few that work in the tourist industry didn't notice a difference either.

Re: time
If you go to the wedding office, which is a good idea, ask if it would speed things up if you went to your wife's city to the office that holds her birth certificate. I don't know the name of the document, but it's like a family birth certificate. That's were our paperwork was sent to be processed. I know for sure we never had our marriage license translated.

[Baba Alex]

Cheers everyone, I let you know how I get on.