Yokuşlu v. Türkiye

Legal summary

January 2026

Yokuşlu v. Türkiye - 489/24

Judgment 6.1.2026 [Section II]

Article 6

Article 6-1

Impartial tribunal

Independent tribunal

Continued deficiencies in practice, despite legislative reform, of the Arbitration Committee of the Turkish Football Federation (TFF) that dismissed a football player’s request to set aside the TFF’s refusal to revoke the termination notice of his contract with a football club: violation

Article 8

Article 8-1

Respect for private life

Alleged breach of the applicant’s freedom to exercise his profession as a result of the decision not to revoke the termination notice of his contract with a football club: inadmissible

Facts – The applicant, a professional football player, was playing for the Altay Sports Club (“the Club”) competing in the Turkish first league. In May 2023 the applicant’s lawyer sent a formal notice to the Club stating that the applicant would terminate his contract 30 days after receipt of the notice if his outstanding salary was not paid. Although the Club paid the applicant’s salary within the 30-day period, the applicant did not inform his lawyer who filed a contract termination notice with the Turkish Football Federation (“TFF”). The TFF registered the notification of termination and cancelled the applicant’s registration with the Club, giving legal effect to it. Subsequently, the applicant’s lawyer and the Club lodged a request with the TFF seeking to retract the termination notice on the grounds it had been submitted by mistake. The Board of Directors of the TFF rejected the request and the applicant’s application for that decision to be set aside was dismissed by the Arbitration Committee.

Law – Article 6 § 1:

(1) Applicability – The purpose of the revocation request before the Arbitration Committee had been to enable the parties to resume their contractual relationship and to avert the negative consequences of an official termination notice which had allegedly been made by mistake. The TFF’s refusal of that request had had a direct and immediate impact on the applicant’s contractual rights and freedoms in the exercise of his professional activity. Thus, the Arbitration Committee proceedings had been decisive for the determination of his civil rights and obligations. Consequently, the relevant guarantees of Article 6 § 1 applied.

(2) Merits – Before the dispute at issue in the present case, on the 28 January 2020, in the judgment of Ali Riza and Others v. Turkey, the Court had found a violation of Article 6 on account of the Arbitration Committee’s structural and institutional dependence on the Board of Directors coupled with the absence of adequate safeguards against external pressures. It held that that had constituted a systemic problem in the settlement of football disputes in Türkiye. Ruling under Article 46, the Court had then called upon the Respondent State to adopt a series of general measures aimed at reforming the system for resolving football disputes. In response, legislative changes had been introduced; it was that new legislative framework that applied to the applicant’s dispute.

However, the Court’s assessment in the present case was confined to determining whether the Arbitration Committee which had decided on the applicant’s dispute and which had been composed in accordance with the legislative amendments, enjoyed a sufficiently independent and impartial status, in particular vis-à-vis the Board of Directors and against outside pressures; not whether the Respondent State had fulfilled its obligation to comply with the general measures indicated in Ali Riza and Others. That said, the shortcomings identified in that judgment remained relevant for its assessment.

(a) Representational imbalance in the bodies of the TFF – There had not been any amendment in the composition of the Congress and the Board of Directors. The representatives of football clubs still made up the majority of the Congress, which elected the Board of Directors. More importantly, the Board of Directors continued to appoint the members of the Arbitration Committee, although that mere fact was not sufficient to cast doubt on its objective impartiality. 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 instructions or had been subject to any pressure from the Board of Directors when deciding on the case. What was at issue thus was whether sufficient safeguards were in place to ensure that the members of the Arbitration Committee had performed their duties with the required level of independence.

(b) Term of office – At the time of the present dispute, legislation provided that the members of the Arbitration Committee were appointed for a term of four years independently from the term of office of the Board of Directors. In Ali Riza and Others the Court had found the previous legislation which had limited the term of office of the members of the Committee to that of the Board of Directors, thus aligning their tenure with that of the TFF’s executive body, called into question the guarantees of independence and impartiality. While the current legislation appeared to remedy that shortcoming by detaching the term of office of the Arbitration Committee from that of the Board of Directors, in practice that had not proven to serve as an adequate guarantee. After the legislative amendments had come into effect, the Arbitration Committee members had resigned in the course of two elections following public calls by the TFF president that they do so despite the fact that the sitting members’ term of office had not expired and legislation provided that they should serve their full term independently from the term of office of the Board of Directors. On both occasions the Board of Directors had appointed new members to the Committee; on the first of those occasions the applicant’s dispute had been adjudicated by the new Committee. Those developments revealed a persistent and troubling pattern, whereby the executive bodies of the TFF, upon being elected, sought to replace committee members with individuals of their own choosing. That practice gave rise to legitimate doubts as to the independence and impartiality of the Arbitration Committee. Accordingly, while the Court welcomed the legislative amendment detaching the term of office of Committee members from that of the Board of Directors, it was not convinced that that measure had proved effective in practice in ensuring the Committee’s structural independence from the Board.

(c) Composition of the Arbitration Committee – The Court reiterated that the fact that the Arbitration Committee had been exclusively composed of lay assessors was unproblematic and noted that the legislative amendments had strengthened the professional and ethical standards required of the members. Most importantly, the amended framework had introduced several disqualification criteria designed to strengthen impartiality and prevent conflicts of interest which were an improvement in the institutional safeguards governing the composition of the Arbitration Committee.

(d) Immunity from legal action – A new legislative provision had been introduced which expressly provided that no legal action might be brought against the members of the Arbitration Committee, except in cases of serious fault such as gross negligence or gross misconduct; that offered a preliminary level of protection. No specific complaint had been raised as to whether the provision governing the liability of members of the Arbitration Committee had had, in practice, consequences that would weaken their position vis-à-vis the parties. However, in the context, the Court considered it helpful to compare the protection afforded to members of the Arbitration Committee with that granted to judges in respect of acts performed in the discharge of their duties. In that regard, comparable domestic law provisions governing the legal liability of judges expressly specified that, even in cases of serious fault, legal action might only be brought against the State and not against an individual judge. Moreover, those provisions set out exclusive and specific grounds of liability and established a time-limit within which the State might exercise its right of recourse against the responsible judge. The provision, however, governing the liability of Arbitration Committee members offered only limited protection, as it left them personally exposed to legal proceedings, without any comparably short and clear temporal limitation and without the clearly defined grounds for which they might be held liable. That situation created the risk of exposing them to prolonged legal threats, thereby weakening the safeguards necessary to secure their independence and impartiality.

(e) Oath and professional rules of conduct – Under the new legislative framework the members of the Arbitration Committee were now required to disclose any relationship or interest that could potentially give rise to a conflict of interest before taking office and make a solemn declaration to avoid such conflicts during their term and to carry out their duties in accordance with the principles of independence and impartiality. While still not formally bound by a codified set of professional rules of conduct, the introduction and content of the solemn declaration constituted a significant improvement and adequately addressed the concerns expressed by the Court in that regard and therefore appeared to be satisfactory.

(f) Procedure and mechanism to decide on recusal requests – The amended legislation required any member of the Arbitration Committee to refrain from sitting in a case which might raise a conflict of interest – a significant improvement on the previous legislation. However, the rules remained deficient as they did not establish a clear procedure to be followed where the challenge to the independence or impartiality of a member came from one of parties in the dispute. Also, it was still not clear which body was competent to decide where a challenge to one or more members of the Committee was raised by the parties in the proceedings. The rules did not specify in that regard whether the remaining members of the Committee would decide on recusal requests given that there had existed no appeal body in the TFF’s system to the Arbitration Committee’s decisions. The absence of a clear procedure and the competent body or composition to decide on recusal requests had constituted a significant lacuna in the new legislation. As a result, the provision in question was not a sufficient guarantee for the structural independence and impartiality of the Arbitration Committee.

(g) Conclusion – The Court noted the improvements in strengthening the institutional framework governing the Arbitration Committee and its members, in particular with respect to the members’ term of office, the Arbitration Committee’s composition, eligibility criteria and disclosure obligations for members and the requirement to make a solemn declaration. However, the provisions regulating the Committee members’ legal liability and the recusal procedure, when members were challenged by the parties, did not entirely satisfy the Convention standards, as identified in Ali Rıza and Others. Moreover, despite the legislative reforms adopted at the TFF level, the practice demonstrated that the four-year term of office of the members was not respected in reality. The Arbitration Committee continued to be reconstituted whenever there was a new election at the executive level of the TFF, thereby justifying the fear that the Committee lacked independence and impartiality. That fear was especially pronounced in a case such as the present one, where the dispute before the Arbitration Committee had concerned a direct challenge to a decision of the Board of Directors itself.

Conclusion: violation (unanimously).

Article 8:

The Court took the consequence-based approach as set out in Denisov v. Ukraine [GC] to examine whether the impugned measures had had serious negative consequences for the applicant’s private life, in particular as regards his “inner circle”, his opportunities to establish and develop relationships with others and his reputation.

As a result of the decision not to revoke the termination notice, the applicant could not continue playing for the Club. However, the applicant’s own failure to promptly inform his lawyer of the Club’s payment had contributed to that situation. The consequences of the decision, which had been limited to the applicant’s contractual relationship with one football club, had not affected or impeded the applicant’s professional career, nor had it prevented him from earning a living by, for example, by signing with another club, which he had done. The hardships the applicant had complained of had not been direct consequences of the decision but rather the result of his own professional choices and external circumstances beyond the Board’s control. The Court had not been presented with any evidence demonstrating that his reputation or social relationships had been adversely affected to a serious degree.

Conclusion: inadmissible (incompatible ratione materiae).

Article 46:

The breach of Article 6 § 1 flowed in part from the shortcomings in the legislation and also from the practice of elected executive bodies of the TFF to reconstitute the Arbitration Committee before the expiry of the existing members’ term of office. Having regard to the structural nature of those deficiencies, the Court could not exclude that it might reach a similar conclusion in respect of future and pending cases concerning the lack of independence and impartiality of the Arbitration Committee. In that regard, it also noted that there were currently approximately 65 applications pending before it in which a similar complaint had been made. The Court therefore recommended that the respondent Government take general measures, by engaging in a dialogue with the Committee of Ministers, to remedy the issues raised in the present case.

Article 41: EUR 6,000 in respect of non-pecuniary damage; claim for pecuniary damage dismissed.

(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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