Legal summary
January 2026
Altıner Akıncı v. Türkiye - 9570/23
Judgment 6.1.2026 [Section II]
Article 6
Article 6-1
Civil rights and obligations
Impartial tribunal
Independent tribunal
Sufficient safeguards ensuring the independence and impartiality of the Sports Arbitration Board in compulsory arbitration proceedings concerning a decision of the Turkish Volleyball Federation despite a number of shortcomings: no violation
Inadequacy of the reasoning of the Sports Arbitration Board and insufficiency of its judicial review of the Turkish Volleyball Federation’s discretionary decision refusing an international beach volleyball referee’s appointment to international competitions and excluding her from the list of accredited referees: violation
Article 8
Article 8-1
Respect for private life
Alleged breach of the applicant’s freedom to exercise her profession as a result of the decision not to include her on the list of referees eligible for international matches: inadmissible
Facts – The Turkish Volleyball Federation (“TVF”) refused to approve the applicant’s appointment to referee two international beach-volleyball competitions. The applicant lodged a claim against the TVF with the Board of the Ministry of Youth and Sports (“the Sports Arbitration Board” – the arbitration board deciding all sports federation disputes in Türkiye except for football), seeking the revocation of the decision not to include her in the list of eligible referees for the relevant periods. The Sports Arbitration Board dismissed her claim, observing that the decision had been within the TVF’s discretion and that the limits of that discretion had not been exceeded.
Law – Article 6 § 1:
The proceedings before the Sports Arbitration Board were compulsory arbitration proceedings and the TVF’s decisions could only be challenged before that Board, whose decisions were final and not amenable to an appeal to a court. Thus, the Sports Arbitration Board had to afford the safeguards secured by Article 6 § 1.
(1) Compliance with the principle of an “independent and impartial tribunal established by law” – The Court noted that the Sports Arbitration Board had been established by primary legislation and its remit and the finality of its decisions were set out in the Constitution. The main issue in the case was the overall independence and impartiality of that Board, questions which were difficult to dissociate as they were based on the same factual considerations. The Court thus considered them together.
The members of the Sports Arbitration Board were appointed by the Minister, who enjoyed an unfettered discretion in choosing who would serve provided that the candidates possessed the qualifications required by the legislation. In the specific context of sports-related disputes and compulsory arbitration proceedings, the requirements of independence and absence of undue influence must also be assessed having regard to the particular institutional framework in which the arbitral tribunals operated. In the present case, there was nothing to suggest that the appointment process had been tainted by undue political influence and there was no indication, nor had the applicant alleged, that the members had received any inappropriate instructions or had been subjected to pressure from the Ministry when deciding on the case. What was at issue was thus whether sufficient safeguards were in place to ensure that the members of the Board had performed their duties with the required level of independence.
Given the similarity of the present case to Ali Rıza and Others v. Turkey, which had concerned proceedings before the Arbitration Committee of the Turkish Football Federation (“TFF”), the Court followed the approach set out in that case.
Distinguishing the TFF Arbitration Committee from the Sports Arbitration Board, the Court noted that the latter had remit that covered all sports disciplines except football. Thus, the undesirable overrepresentation of the interests of clubs or federations in the appointment and functions of the Board was simply not at issue in the present case. More importantly, the present dispute had been between the applicant and a private sports federation, rather than between the applicant and the Ministry. Had the latter been the case, the applicant’s argument that the arbitrators had lacked independence on account of being appointed by the Minister would have carried more weight. While the Minister appointed the members of the Sports Arbitration Board as well as the representatives to the Congress of the TVF, the ratio of the Ministry’s representatives therein was not so high as to justify from an objective point of view, that the Sports Arbitration Board would be biased in a dispute involving the TVF solely because the Minister had appointed both to a body of a sports federation and to its arbitration board.
The term of office of the members of the Sports Arbitration Board was limited to four years during which their tenure was guaranteed by law. Unlike the situation in the TFF Arbitration Committee, the Sport Arbitration Board member’s term of office did not depend on the executive body of the sports federation or on the Minister. Furthermore, the remuneration of the members of the Sports Arbitration Board was set out in legislation and not determined by the Minister. While no specific rules prohibited anyone from giving orders or instructions to its members, the law explicitly required them to decide disputes independently and impartially. They had the right to give separate opinions and the procedure to be followed before the Sports Arbitration Board was set out in its regulations. Therefore, members of the Sports Arbitration Board were not subordinate to the Minister. Although the secretarial services of the Board were provided by the Ministry, the coordinator appointed from the Ministry to organise the administrative work of the Board reported directly to the Board’s chairman and was responsible to him or her. These factors – security of tenure, a fixed term of office, the amount of remuneration being set out in legislation; and a lack of subordination to the Ministry, coupled with the Board’s lack of any organisational or structural relationship with the parties to the dispute – were sufficient safeguards to ensure independence and impartiality.
That being so, a number of shortcomings already observed with respect to the TFF’s Arbitration Committee also appeared to affect the Sports Arbitration Board. In particular, there was no rule requiring a member to disclose circumstances which might affect his or her independence and impartiality; no specific procedure to be followed in cases where the independence or impartiality of member was challenged by the parties; and no rule specifying a body that could hear such a challenge. Further, while the Sports Arbitration Board being composed exclusively of lay assessors did not pose a problem for the Court, its members were not immune from legal action in connection with the discharge of their duties, were not bound by any rules of professional conduct, nor required to swear an oath or make a solemn declaration before taking up their duties.
Nevertheless, based on these shortcomings alone, the Court could not conclude that the Sports Arbitration Board had lacked independence and impartiality when dealing with the applicant’s case, having regard to the safeguards identified and the absence of any structural imbalance in the representation of interests. More importantly, the applicant had not alleged that one or more its members had been tainted by a conflict of interests when examining her case.
Conclusion: no violation (unanimously).
(2) Lack of adequate reasoning and sufficient judicial review – As the TVF had the sole authority to take decisions in respect of referees as far as the administration and management of volleyball was concerned, it had to be treated as an administrative authority, and as such the Court’s case-law on administrative law appeals was relevant to the scope of judicial or quasi-judicial review exercised by the Sports Arbitration Board. Consequently, the guarantees applicable to administrative decision-making and the standards of judicial review under Article 6 § 1 came into play.
The Sports Arbitration Board had merely stated that the TVF had not exceeded its discretion in its decision to exclude the applicant from its list of accredited referees for the periods in question, without explaining in its reasoning how it had come to that conclusion. In that context, however, it had been essential for the Sports Arbitration Board to ascertain the criteria employed by the TVF in selecting the referees to be included on the list, and to assess, in the light of applicable laws and regulations, whether the exercise of discretion had been arbitrary. Given the brevity of its reasoning, which contained no indication of the factual and/or legal basis for finding that TVF’s discretion had complied with the lawfulness criteria, the review that had been conducted could not be regarded as either sufficient or meaningful for the purposes of Article 6 § 1. That lack of reasoned assessment of the applicant’s decisive arguments and the underlying facts had resulted in insufficient judicial review.
Conclusion: violation (unanimously).
Article 8:
The Court took the consequence-based approach as set out in Denisov v. Ukraine [GC] to examine whether the disputed decision not to include the applicant on the list of referees eligible for international matches had had sufficiently serious negative consequences for her private life, in particular as regards her “inner circle”, her opportunities to establish and develop relationships with others and her reputation.
The applicant had been neither disqualified nor demoted, nor otherwise prevented from refereeing because of the decision. She had maintained her status as a national and international referee and had continued to referee matches at the domestic level. While the TVF’s decision had affected her ability to develop her refereeing career and her professional relationships at an international level, those effects had not been substantial. The applicant had submitted that her material well-being had been affected because she had been unable to earn income from international matches, which had previously constituted a significant portion of her income. However, no evidence had been presented to demonstrate that officiating as a referee at matches had constituted a fixed or reliable source of income; It appeared rather that the number of matches assigned to a referee in a given year might fluctuate or a referee might not be assigned any matches despite being on a list. Moreover, the applicant had only presented financial statements detailing her income from international competitions for two years. In those circumstances, the Court did not find that the measure had directly resulted in the worsening of the applicant’s material well-being to any significant extent. As regards the consequences to her reputation, she had not put forward any arguments in that regard. In any event, the TVF’s decision had not contained or implied any negative comments about the applicant’s performance.
Accordingly, having assessed the applicant’s perceptions in the light of the established facts and evaluated, on the basis of the available evidence, the material and moral impact of the disputed measure, the Court concluded that the TVF’s decision had not had a sufficiently serious impact on the applicant’s private life to engage Article 8.
Conclusion: inadmissible (incompatible ratione materiae).
Article 41: EUR 6,000 in respect of non-pecuniary damage.
(See Denisov v. Ukraine [GC], 76639/11, 25 September 2018, Legal Summary; Ali Riza and Others v. Turkey, 30226/10 et al., 28 January 2020)
© Council of Europe/European Court of Human Rights
This summary by the Registry does not bind the Court.
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