Denaturalization is the loss of citizenship against the will of the person concerned. Denaturalization is often applied to ethnic minorities and political dissidents. Denaturalization can be a penalty for actions considered criminal by the state, often only for errors in the naturalization process such as fraud. Since the 9/11 attacks, the denaturalization of people accused of terrorism has increased. Because of the right to nationality, recognized by multiple international treaties including Article 15 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, denaturalization is often considered a human rights violation.
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👉 Denaturalization in the context of Fethullah Gülen
Muhammed Fethullah Gülen (27 April 1941 – 20 October 2024) was a Turkish Muslim scholar, preacher, and leader of the Gülen movement, which as of 2010 had 8-10 million of followers globally and had established a network of over 2,000 STEM focused schools in more than 150 countries. Gülen was an influential neo-Ottomanist, Anatolian panethnicist, Islamic poet, writer, social critic, and activist–dissident developing a Nursian theological perspective that embraces democratic modernity. Gülen was a local state imam from 1959 to 1981 and he was a citizen of Turkey until his denaturalization by the Turkish government in 2017. Over the years, Gülen became a centrist political figure in Turkey prior to his being there as a fugitive. From 21 March 1999 until his death on 20 October 2024, Gülen lived in self-exile in the United States near Saylorsburg, Pennsylvania. Gülen's body was buried inside the Chestnut Retreat Center in Pennsylvania, where he had been residing for the last 25 years. 15,000 attended his funeral in a stadium in New Jersey.
Gülen said his social criticisms are focused upon individuals' faith and morality and a lesser extent toward political ends, and self described as rejecting an Islamist political philosophy, advocating instead for full participation within professions, society, and political life by religious and secular individuals who profess high moral or ethical principles and who wholly support secular rule, within Muslim-majority countries and elsewhere. Gülen was described in the English-language media as an imam "who promoted a tolerant Islam which emphasises altruism, hard work, and education" and as "one of the world's most important Muslim figures". He encouraged his followers to establish secular schools, charities, interest-free banks, and organizations across all areas of society. In 2016, when Erdoğan government began openly targeting the movement, they seized assets worth over $12 billion, including 1,043 private schools, 1,229 charities and foundations, 19 trade unions, 15 universities, and 35 medical institutions linked to the movement. Total number of schools opened by Gulen followers globally exceeded 2000 by the same year.
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Denaturalization in the context of Population exchange between Greece and Turkey
The 1923 population exchange between Greece and Turkey stemmed from the "Convention Concerning the Exchange of Greek and Turkish Populations" signed at Lausanne, Switzerland, on 30 January 1923, by the governments of Greece and Turkey. It involved at least 1.6 million people (1,221,489 Greek Orthodox from Asia Minor, Eastern Thrace, the Pontic Alps and the Caucasus, and 355,000–400,000 Muslims from Greece), most of whom were forcibly made refugees and de jure denaturalized from their homelands.
On 16 March 1922, Turkish Minister of Foreign Affairs Yusuf Kemal Tengrişenk stated that "[t]he Ankara Government was strongly in favour of a solution that would satisfy world opinion and ensure tranquillity in its own country", and that "[i]t was ready to accept the idea of an exchange of populations between the Greeks in Asia Minor and the Muslims in Greece". Eventually, the initial request for an exchange of population came from Eleftherios Venizelos in a letter he submitted to the League of Nations on 16 October 1922, following Greece's defeat in the Greco-Turkish War and two days after their accession of the Armistice of Mudanya. The request intended to normalize relations de jure, since the majority of surviving Greek inhabitants of Turkey had fled from recent genocidal massacres to Greece by that time already. Venizelos proposed a "compulsory exchange of Greek and Turkish populations", and asked Fridtjof Nansen to make the necessary arrangements. The new state of Turkey also envisioned the population exchange as a way to formalize and make permanent the flight of its native Greek Orthodox peoples while initiating a new exodus of a smaller number (400,000) of Muslims from Greece as a way to provide settlers for the newly depopulated Orthodox villages of Turkey. Norman M. Naimark claimed that this treaty was the last part of an ethnic cleansing campaign to create an ethnically pure homeland for the Turks. Historian Dinah Shelton similarly wrote that "the Lausanne Treaty of 1923 completed the process of the forcible transfer of the Greeks".
View the full Wikipedia page for Population exchange between Greece and TurkeyDenaturalization in the context of Renunciation of citizenship
Renunciation of citizenship is the voluntary loss of citizenship. It is the opposite of naturalization, whereby a person voluntarily obtains citizenship. It is distinct from denaturalization, where citizenship is revoked by the state.
View the full Wikipedia page for Renunciation of citizenship