MP will not be stripped of citizenship — Denktaş
A CONTROVERSIAL MP born in Turkey will not be deprived of his TRNC citizenship, Finance Minister and Democrat Party leader Serdar Denktaş said on Tuesday.
Mr Denktaş was reacting to accusations aired in the media last week that Rebirth Party (YDP) deputy Bertan Zaroğlu had obtained his North Cyprus citizenship by “bribing” former governments.
Mr Zaroğlu, a former chairman of a North Cyprus association set up to represent people from the Turkish province of Hatay, entered Parliament for the first time at last month’s general election. Born in 1982 in the town of Reyhanlı, near the border with Syria, he came to the TRNC in 2004, studying interior design at Gazimağusa’s Eastern Mediterranean University.
After graduating he decided to stay in North Cyprus, taking on roles in various clubs, associations and unions, before helping found YDP in 2016.
He was reported to have been granted citizenship on January 21, 2010 in a decision by Derviş Eroğlu’s Cabinet “without any explanation”, and was exempted from TRNC military service by a medical report from a military hospital three months later.
In November he was ordered by a Lefkoşa court to pay Republican Turkish Party (CTP) MP Doğuş Derya 45,000TL in damages and 15,000TL legal costs over offensive comments made against her on social media in December 2014.
During a swearing-in ceremony for MPs last month, he threw a screwedup piece of paper at Ms Derya’s face after she criticised Turkey’s ongoing offensive in northern Syria.
It was revealed that in April 2013 Mr Zaroğlu had issued a statement as head of the Hatay Association, when he said that citizenship is “not a grace given by either the government or a department, but a right”.
He had called for those who were eligible to be “granted citizenship”, but underlined the importance of having a “limit” so that the “political will of the Turkish Cypriot people is not undermined”.
Last Friday night Interior Minister Ayşegül Baybars Kadri, from the People’s Party (HP), said during a TV interview that “what was necessary would be done” if it was established that Mr Zaroğlu had obtained his Turkish Cypriot citizenship fraudulently.
The minister made the comments during a TV interview, in which she stressed that being an MP “does not change anything” and that “everyone is equal before the law”. She said that while laws allowed the government to grant citizenship on a “discretionary” basis, the decision to do so should not be “arbitrary”.
Asked on another TV programme to comment on the furore, Mr Denktaş said: “The citizenship of Bertan Zaroğlu cannot be cancelled, this is not possible . . . What [Mrs Baybars Kadri] said was simply that if there was an irregularity then no-one can hide behind the shield of being an MP . . . This does not mean that Zaroğlu would be stripped of his citizenship.”
Mr Denktaş added that if “anyone was going to be penalised” it would be “those who issued the citizenship, not the person who received it”.
Mr Zaroğlu said in an interview that Mrs Baybars Kadri had answered in a “very novice manner” questions about his citizenship.
He also admitted other claims that he had not completed obligatory military service, but explained that he had been exempted “following an accident in 2010” that left him “unfit” to serve.
“Everyone who knows me knows my love for the Turkish nation,” he added. “I was born a soldier, even though I could not do this honourable service.”
YDP leader Erhan Arıklı defended his MP, saying that “horses don’t die just because the dogs want them to”.