Posted on December 21, 2018

Austrian Vice Chancellor Proposes Full Halt on Granting Turks Citizenship

Associated Press, December 20, 2018

Austrian Vice Chancellor and leader of the populist Freedom Party (FPÖ) Heinz-Christian Strache has proposed halting all citizenship applications for Turks after a court ruling refused to let the government strip the citizenship of dual nationals.

Mr Strache said that due to the lack of cooperation from the Turkish government in identifying which Austrian residents also held Turkish citizenship, the Austrian government would be looking to halt all new citizenship ceremonies for Turks, Kronen Zeitung reports.

The move comes after a court ruling earlier this month which sided with a plaintiff who was set to have his Austrian citizenship revoked after being found on a Turkish electoral list which implied he was still a Turkish citizen.

The court ruled that the 2015 voter list used by the FPÖ to identify dual nationals was not completely reliable as the man, who had lived in Austria for 40 years and has had an Austrian passport since 1996, was able to prove he had renounced his citizenship.

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According to Vienna city councillor and member of the Social Democrats (SPÖ) Jürgen Czernohorszky, Vienna alone had a backlog of around 18,000 suspected cases of Turks with dual citizenship based on the 2015 voting list. {snip}

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While Strache does not have support from the left on the issue, he may have support from his coalition partner, the Austrian People’s Party (ÖVP) led by Chancellor Sebastian Kurz.

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Both Kurz and Strache have railed against some members of the Turkish community in Austria, particularly supporters of Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

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