SECOND SECTION
DECISION
Application no. 31037/06
İbrahim DURSUN
against Turkey
The European Court of Human Rights (Second Section), sitting on 15 October 2013 as a Committee composed of:
Peer Lorenzen, President,
András Sajó,
Nebojša Vučinić, judges,
and Seçkin Erel, Acting Deputy Section Registrar,
Having regard to the above application lodged on 19 July 2006,
Having deliberated, decides as follows:
THE FACTS
The applicant, Mr İbrahim Dursun, is a Turkish national, who was born in 1965 and lives in Antalya. He was represented before the Court by Mr M. Yıldız and Mr A. Sevim, lawyers practising in Batman.
The circumstances of the case
The facts of the case, as submitted by the applicant, may be summarised as follows.
In 1989 the applicant applied to the Municipality of Batman (“the Municipality”) to obtain a licence to transport passengers on a pre‑determined itinerary via a minibus. On 3 November 1989 the licence was granted.
The applicant operated the minibus until 1991, at which time he left Batman due to the increasingly precarious security situation in the city caused by wide‑spread terrorist activities. When leaving the city, the applicant did not cede his transportation licence, nor did he notify the municipal authorities that he would no longer be running the minibus service, which he was obliged to do by law.
Following the amelioration of the security situation in Batman, in 1999 the applicant returned to the city and on 27 July 1999 he requested the renewal of his transportation licence from the Municipality.
On 21 June 2000 the Directorate of Traffic at the Municipality, which was in charge of processing the licence applications, sought advice from the legal department as to the applicant’s request. They indicated, inter alia, that according to their records, the applicant had been granted a licence in 1989, but there had been no request to renew it after 1991. Although this conduct normally required the revocation of the licence, no such decision had been taken by the Municipality. They inquired as to whether the licence in question could be renewed in these circumstances. This request was repeated on 3 November 2000.
On 7 December 2000 the legal department replied that according to Section 10 of the Regulation issued by the Provincial Traffic Commission (İl Trafik Komisyonu), minibus owners who ceased their licensed transport operations were under an obligation to notify the Municipality of their reasons within three days. Failure to make such notification would be subjected to the penalties set out Section 13, which included a monetary sanction and the eventual annulment of the licence in the event of recurrence of this breach within a one-year period. The legal department opined that since none of these steps had been taken by the Municipality at the relevant time, it would no longer be possible to enforce the sanctions envisaged in Section 13 against the applicant. The Municipality, therefore, had no legal basis to turn down the applicant’s request for the renewal of his transportation licence.
Accordingly, on 15 March 2001 the applicant’s transportation licence was renewed.
On an unspecified date in 2001, the Cooperative of Motor Vehicle Careers No. 6 (Motorlu Taşıyıcılar Kooperatifi) brought an action before the Diyarbakır Administrative Court against the Municipality of Batman, requesting the revocation of the latter’s decision to renew the applicant’s transportation licence, which they deemed to be unlawful under the applicable laws. The applicant joined the proceedings on the Municipality’s side.
On 27 May 2004 the Diyarbakır Administrative Court granted the Cooperative’s request to declare the Municipality’s decision of 15 March 2001 unlawful on account of the Municipality’s failure to comply with the relevant legal regulations. In delivering this judgment, the administrative court referred to Sections 10 and 13 of the Regulation mentioned above, as well Section 6, which stipulated the obligation to renew transportation licences in the first two months of each calendar year, the failure to do which would result in the annulment of the licence by a decision of the town council. Moreover, under the same Section, the renewal of licences so annulled would entail payment of additional charges and penalties. Noting that the town council of the Municipality of Batman had renewed the applicant’s licence without taking any of these steps, the administrative court declared that the renewed licence had no legal validity.
On 18 November 2005 the Supreme Administrative Court upheld the judgment of the Diyarbakır Administrative Court. It appears that this decision was served on the applicant on 19 January 2006.
COMPLAINT
The applicant complained under Article 1 of Protocol No. 1 to the Convention that the withdrawal of his transportation licence by an erroneous court order had infringed his right to property.
THE LAW
The applicant claimed that the revocation of his licence, which he had obtained with an expectation to maintain for a long-term and which provided him with an income, had amounted to a violation of his property rights guaranteed under Article 1 of Protocol No. 1. He argued in particular that contrary to the findings of the domestic courts, the necessary conditions for the annulment of his licence had not materialised under the terms of the Regulation issued by the Provincial Traffic Commission.
The Court reiterates at the outset that the withdrawal of valid permits to run a business may in certain circumstances constitute an interference with the right to the peaceful enjoyment of possessions guaranteed by Article 1 of Protocol No. 1, as it is considered as a measure of control of the use of property, which falls to be examined under the second paragraph of this provision (see, for instance, Tre Traktörer AB v. Sweden, 7 July 1989, § 55, Series A no. 159 ; and Rosenzweig and Bonded Warehouses Ltd v. Poland, no. 51728/99, § 49, 28 July 2005).
In the light of this principle, the primary question to be resolved in the instant case is whether the applicant was in possession of a valid transportation licence, the subsequent withdrawal of which could be deemed to have constituted an interference with his property rights. The Court notes in this connection that the applicant applied for a transportation licence before the Municipality of Batman initially in 1989, which was granted for an indefinite term. However, after leaving Batman in 1991, he did not perform the annual renewal procedures, nor did he inform the relevant authorities of the cessation of activities under that licence. According to the relevant domestic rules, in particular Sections 6, 10 and 13 of the Regulation mentioned above, the failure to take such action would bring about the annulment of the transportation licence by the town council, together with some monetary penalties. The applicant had, however, escaped these sanctions owing to an omission on the part of the town council. Moreover, on the basis of the advice provided by the legal department of the Municipality of Batman, his subsequent application for the renewal of his licence in 1999 was processed and granted as an ordinary renewal, apparently without bearing the punitive consequences of his negligence. The Diyarbakır Administrative Court, however, rejected the legal reasoning adopted by the Municipality in relation to the applicant’s case and declared that the irregularities in the former’s conduct had rendered its decision to renew the applicant’s licence unlawful and, therefore, invalid.
In these circumstances, considering that the transportation licence had no legal validity ab initio, its withdrawal by a final court order in 2005 cannot be considered to amount to an infringement of the applicant’s property rights under Article 1 of Protocol No.1, which only protects a person’s existing possessions or legitimate expectations to obtain such possessions (J.A. Pye (Oxford) Ltd and J.A. Pye (Oxford) Land Ltd v. the United Kingdom [GC], no. 44302/02, § 61, ECHR 2007‑III). Any expectation that the applicant might have had for the renewal of the transportation licence on the basis of the initial favourable interpretation of the relevant laws by the Batman Municipality was lost when that interpretation was rejected by the national courts as incorrect (see Kopecký v. Slovakia [GC], no. 44912/98, § 50, ECHR 2004‑IX; and Anheuser-Busch Inc. v. Portugal [GC], no. 73049/01, § 65, ECHR 2007‑I). Nothing in the instant case suggests that the national courts, who are best placed to resolve problems of interpretation of domestic legislation, interpreted and applied the relevant legal provisions manifestly erroneously or so as to reach an arbitrary conclusion (see mutatis mutandis, Beyeler v. Italy [GC], no. 33202/96, § 108, ECHR 2000-I).
Having regard to the foregoing, the Court finds that the applicant’s complaint under Article 1 of Protocol No. 1 is manifestly ill-founded within the meaning of Article 35 § 3 of the Convention and must be rejected in accordance with paragraph 4 of this provision.
For these reasons, the Court unanimously
Declares the application inadmissible.
Seçkin ErelPeer Lorenzen
Acting Deputy RegistrarPresident
Full & Egal Universal Law Academy