Mehmet Oz would be the only U.S. senator to hold two passports should he complete the journey from Oprah Winfrey acolyte and daytime television host to the world’s greatest deliberative body. 

The Turkish American made that announcement yesterday, PoliticsPA reports, explaining that should he emerge victorious from a bruising Republican primary and triumph in the general election Dr. Oz would retain his Turkish citizenship alongside his American one. 

In asserting that he would continue as a Turkish citizen, the Pennsylvania Republican expressed a desire to visit his Alzheimer’s-stricken mother in Istanbul. “I can love my country and love my mom,” he said. He indicated that if necessary he would forgo certain security clearances in order to remain a Turkish national. 

This has set off alarm among some national security wonks. A senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, Michael Rubin, believes that at the very least, “Oz’s dual citizenship — and his reluctance to renounce Turkish citizenship — will keep the FBI and security managers up at night.”

The question of Dr. Oz’s citizenship, the Sun has reported, has intermittently surfaced since he entered the race to replace Senator Toomey, who is retiring. An acting director of national intelligence and ambassador to Germany under President Trump, Richard Grenell, tweeted that Dr. Oz “might as well announce that he’s no longer running.”  

Senator McCain’s political svengali turned Lincoln Project impresario, Stephen Schmidt, argued that “a dual citizen cannot and must not serve in the U.S. Senate. He cannot be a candidate until he renounces his Turkish citizenship.”

Others have pursued a similar line of argument, with National Review worrying that Dr. Oz’s ties with entities like the World Turkish Business Council, Turkish Airlines, and the media outlet BiP presaged unseemly entanglements with the regime of President Erdogan. 

An op-ed article in the Washington Post by Joshua Rogin maintained “never before has our country experienced a senator who has dual citizenship, served in a foreign military, and maintains deep ties to the other nation where he holds citizenship.” 

The issue has come up on the campaign trail as well, with Dr. Oz’s most formidable opponent, David McCormick, the onetime Bridgewater chief executive officer, calling on the physician and television personality to “renounce his citizenship” as a prerequisite for representing the Keystone State.

There is no constitutional bar to a dual citizen serving in the Senate, with the Framers in Article I Section 3 requiring only that a candidate be 30 years old, an American citizen for nine years, and a resident of the state he or she aspires to represent. 

The senatorial oath of office requires a pledge to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic” but likewise does not demand exclusively American citizenship

Nevertheless, the only senator to hold dual citizenship, Ted Cruz, renounced his Canadian ties in 2014, saying, “nothing against Canada, but I’m an American by birth and as a U.S. senator, I believe I should be only an American.”

The contretemps over Dr. Oz’s citizenship comes at a newsworthy moment in Turkey’s global posture. Its ties with Israel are warming. It has taken a number of anti-Russian positions, including calling the Ukraine invasion an “unjust and unlawful act” and condemning Russia’s war  at the United Nations. These all raise hopes that the strategically vital country aims to repair frayed ties with the West.