SECOND SECTION
DECISION
Application no. 57507/14
Mesut TOMAŞ
against Turkey
The European Court of Human Rights (Second Section), sitting on 17 February 2015 as a Committee composed of:
Helen Keller, President,
Egidijus Kūris,
Jon Fridrik Kjølbro, judges,
and Abel Campos, Deputy Section Registrar,
Having regard to the above application lodged on 6 August 2014,
Having deliberated, decides as follows:
THE FACTS
1. The applicant, Mr Mesut Tomaş, is a Turkish national who was born in 1940 and lives in Denizli. He was represented before the Court by Mr İ. Kahraman, a lawyer practising in Istanbul.
A. The circumstances of the case
2. The facts of the case, as submitted by the applicant, may be summarised as follows.
3. On 5 December 1972 the applicant had acquired the title deed of the property in Aydin province and the same was registered with the Land Registry.
4. On 17 June 1976 the title deed was annulled by Söke Civil Court of General Jurisdiction as the land was deemed unsuitable for registration. The plot of land had been described as a shrubbery and a stony area that should have remained under the State’s control according to the legislation in force at the time of the events. The Court stated that this land should never have been approved to be used as private property and therefore should not have been registered under the name of the applicant. On 31 May 1977 that judgment became final.
5. In July 2000, some plots were allocated to the Didim Directorate of Security to be used as recreational and social facilities for police officers.
6. On 18 June 2010, a new law (Law no. 5999) entered into force, allowing the individuals to apply for an arbitration scheme to seek damages for some previous de facto expropriations conducted by public authorities. The law provides that the individuals can apply to the administration to be eligible for arbitration in relation to the properties confiscated or occupied by the State authorities between 9 October 1956 and 4 November 1983 without having recourse to the formal expropriation procedure.
7. On 14 December 2010, the arbitration request filed by the applicant was dismissed by the Governorship of Aydin on the basis that the situation concerning the land at stake did not qualify as de facto expropriation according to Law no. 5999. The Governorship also stated that the title deed of the applicant’s property was not annulled for expropriation and the land was assigned to the public service in 2000 and in consideration of these elements, the applicant’s case was not covered by the Law no. 5999.
8. The applicant brought his allegations before the competent court by filing a civil law compensation claim. On 24 October 2011, Didim Civil Court of General Jurisdiction dismissed the applicant’s claim indicating that the applicant’s title deed had been annulled in 1977 by a court decision as it should not have been approved to be used as private property and that an expropriation of any kind had not been at stake.
9. On 2 October 2012, that decision was upheld by the Court of Cassation. On 19 March 2013, the Court of Cassation further rejected the application for rectification of judgment.
10. On 25 April 2014, the Turkish Constitutional Court (TCC) rejected the complaint under article 1 of Protocol no.1 as inadmissible for the failure to exhaust domestic remedies, due to the fact that the statutory time-limit of 10 years provided for in the national law had expired. It declared manifestly ill-founded the complaint under Article 6.
COMPLAINTS
11. Invoking Article 1 of Protocol no.1 to the Convention, the applicant maintains that he has been arbitrarily deprived of his property, as his request to benefit from the favourable provisions of Law no. 5999 was rejected. The applicant also invokes Article 6 of the Convention: he complains of the outcome of the proceedings, stating that domestic courts erred in the assessment of the facts and evidence.
THE LAW
12. The applicant alleges that the annulment of his title deed in 1976, and subsequently the rejection of his request to benefit from the compensation scheme provided by Law no. 5999, unlawfully deprived him of his property.
13. The Court reiterates that, in accordance with the general rules of international law, the provisions of the Convention do not bind a Contracting Party in relation to any act or fact which took place, or any situation which ceased to exist, before the date of the entry into force of the Convention with respect to that Party (see, for example, Kadiķis v. Latvia (dec.), no. 47634/99, 29 June 2000).
14. Upon a thorough analysis of the case-file, the Court considers that the annulment of the title deed was the constitutive fact of the alleged interference. The rejection of the application made by the applicant to the administration in order to benefit from the provisions of Law no. 5999 and the subsequent civil proceedings do not constitute interference with his alleged property rights, all the more so that, as domestic courts have noted, the applicant’s case was not covered by the provisions of Law no. 5999.
15. It should be noted that the actions of the State authorities which interfered with the applicant’s right to property occurred in 1976, and the civil proceedings concerning the applicant’s deprivation of his land became final in 1977.
16. Therefore, the Court finds that the alleged violation of the right to the peaceful enjoyment of the property occurred well before 28 January 1987, the date on which Turkey recognised the competency of the Convention organs to examine individual petitions. It follows that the complaint under Article 1 of Protocol no. 1 is incompatible ratione temporis with the provisions of the Convention within the meaning of Article 35 § 3.
17. As to the applicant’s allegations under Article 6 in relation to civil proceedings, it should be emphasized that these complaints mainly concern the outcome of the proceedings. The civil courts decided that the applicant’s case was not one of the subjects covered by the Law no. 5999, as the applicant’s land had not been de facto expropriated but his title deed was annulled in 1976 for another reason. Decisions rendered by the national tribunals do not disclose any arbitrariness. Therefore, the applicant’s complaint is of a fourth instance nature and is manifestly ill-founded and must be rejected pursuant to Article 35 § 4 thereof.
For these reasons, the Court unanimously
Declares the application inadmissible.
Done in English and notified in writing on 19 March 2015.
Abel CamposHelen Keller
Deputy RegistrarPresident
Full & Egal Universal Law Academy