English MP says he is permanently in Turkey after getting citizenship

Zeynep Bilgehan – BODRUM

English parliamentarian Robert Walter, who received his Turkish citizenship from Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu in May, said he was here to stay in the country.  

Walter, who is an MP from the English Conservative Party and the head of the United Kingdom delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, said he liked Turkey, including the people, the food and the warmth very much and wanted to have dual citizenship just like his Turkish wife, Feride Alp. 

“My wife has dual citizenship. Why shouldn’t I have it too? I wanted that we both are citizens of both of the countries,” said Walter, in their shared house in Turkey’s Aegean resort town of Bodrum. 

Walter said he and Alp were married in 2011 and he had to wait three years to apply for citizenship, the legal time for such a demand. He added not having citizenship had started to cause problems, as it prevented him from staying in the country longer than 90 days, but as they had decided to spend most of their time in their home in Bodrum he wished not to encounter any problems.  

Stating that he “got used to the unpredictable” sides of Turkey, Walter said that one of these sides was the problems he faced with the “W” letter in his last name.  

“My surname in my [Turkish] ID card has become ‘Valter.’ This is interesting as its written ‘Walter’ on the deed of my land here, my tax lodging and bank account but the ‘W’ has become a problem for the civil registry office,” Walter said. 

The Turkish alphabet does not contain letters such as “W,” “X” or “Q” and thus does not allow them to be used on ID cards. This practice also causes problems for citizens of Kurdish origin, as the Kurdish alphabet contains the aforementioned letters.