Hello,
my partner was born in Turkey, his father is Turkish and his mother is English. After his father passed away, he returned to live in England with his mother back in 1991. Since then he has never returned to Turkey (apart from a few short family holidays until 1994). He is now 34.

I myself am Turkish but was born in England (hence the lack of Turkish language) and together we have two children who we would love to take to Turkey and introduce to our long lost relatives, but cant afford the "dovizli askerlik" and couldn't even afford the time he would need to take off from work to do the month that is required of him. So I have been looking into other options.

I've read that he can delay his service until the age of 38 but have come up against some problems.

First of all his "nufus" is out of date which I guess we will have to renew (?). I have been trying to get an appointment via the London Turkish Consulate but for some reason his "nufus number" is not being accepted. Could this be because it is very out of date? How else will I be able to get an appointment?

I have all the other required documents including his British Citizenship certificate and old British and Turkish passports but the site says that they will need to see the stamp when he entered the UK. Well, there is no stamp on either passports because he is a dual citizen. I guess he entered the Uk with his British Passport (?) So what else can I show to prove his date of entry? And is this all that necessary as it was so many years ago (1991). We have his old school letters and reports from when he started school in England (a few weeks after he arrived) Would that be sufficient?

On the other hand, he has lived in England most of his life and has no real or emotional connections to the country in which he was born and no intentions to ever live there either. We have read on various forums that he could give up his Turkish Citizenship and therefore enter Turkey for a holiday as any other tourist would. Is this possible? If so what problems could this cause in the future? Would we have to go through the "erteleme" process in order for this to happen? I read that otherwise it may not be accepted as he is probably seen as a "kacak" due to his age. Is this true? Also, do you know how long this process could take? Are we talking months or years? Is there a way we could find out what his status is? (ie "kacak" etc) My brother is in a similar predicament and when we went to the Turkish Consulate with him recently, they didn't have any idea of who he was and therefore had no status. Not sure if he has one now that he as renewed his "nufus". Is there a way we could check this without causing unnecessary attention to ourselves?

We have even looked into the option of his health being a reason to cancel any possibility of him needing to do his military at all. He has Sturge- Weber syndrome which potentially could cause serious neurological problems one day. Currently it has caused Glaucoma in his right eye. He uses two different drops to control the pressure but so far it doesn't seem to be doing much good as the pressure is increasing. How would we go about getting this checked by a military hospital whilst in the UK? Are there centres that we can go to or is this something that needs to be done in Turkey?

Which of these three options do you think would take the shortest time to sort? I was thinking that maybe we should go for the "erteleme" option as then at least by 38 we'll have a few years to look into permanently canceling his military service due to his health or simply revoke his Turkish Citizenship. Does this make sense to you?

As you can probably see, we have tried very hard to research this on the web, especially with our minimal Turkish but its very hard to know what sites to trust. I hope you can help us.

Kindest regards,
Jale and Aslan