NICOSIA – The teachers union representing Turkish-Cypriots living in the occupied territory said the legitimate Cypriot government won’t issue identification cards to children who have a Turkish parent.
Shener Elcil, chief of the KTOS union, met with Ombudswoman Maria Stylianou Lottides to discuss the refusal by the state to grant the cards and bar citizenship even though one of their parents is a Cypriot citizen.
Elcil said the refusal is a violation of the Constitution and that since the unlawful invasion by Turkey in 1974, some 17,000 mixed marriages have taken place in the north, the Cyprus Mail reported.
According to Elcil, state services recently didn’t even accept applications filed by children of mixed marriages asking to be granted citizenship, rejecting them without a review.
There are thousands of children with one Turkish Cypriot parent and the other coming from a non-EU country, Elcil said, and whose applications to receive the ID card and passport are pending, saying the children were being held hostage by politics and said their human rights were being violated.
Talks to reunify the island have gone nowhere for more than four decades and the latest round, negotiations between Cypriot President Nicos Anastasiades and Turkish-Cypriot leader Mustafa Akinci, fell apart at the Swiss resort of Crans-Montana in July after Turkey refused to remove its army and demanded the right to further invade when it wanted.
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Photo Source: Wikimedia Commons Copyright: Golbez License: CC-BY-SA
Source: thenationalherald.com
