Information Note on the Court’s case-law No. 96

April 2007

Ari and Others v. Turkey - 65508/01

Judgment 3.4.2007 [Section II]

Article 1 of Protocol No. 1

Article 1 para. 1 of Protocol No. 1

Deprivation of property

Compensation for loss of title to land on which the Army had placed landmines refused on grounds of twenty-year continual occupation by the State: violation

Facts : The applicants were the owners of land on which the army had laid mines. Several years later, alleging de facto expropriation, they requested that the land be entered in the land register in the State’s name and claimed compensation.

Under the applicable legislation, compensation for deprivation of property was not paid automatically by the authorities, but had to be claimed by the individuals concerned within twenty years of the date of de facto occupation of the property. The court established that the land had been mined more than twenty years previously, in the 1950s, and had been assigned for use by the gendarmerie command since that time. Noting that the land had been occupied by the authorities in the public interest for an unbroken twenty-year period, the court held that the conditions laid down by the Expropriation Act could be said to have been met and dismissed the applicants’ claim for compensation. The Defence Ministry requested that the mined land be entered in the land register in the State’s name. On the basis of the Expropriation Act, the title to the property was transferred from the applicants to the State.

Law : The cancellation of the applicants’ title to the property recorded in the land register and the transfer of the property to the Defence Ministry had had the effect of depriving the applicants of their “possession”. The consequence of applying section 38 of the Expropriation Act (Law no. 2942) had been to deprive them of any possibility of obtaining compensation.

Conclusion : violation (unanimously).

Article 41 – EUR 240,000 for pecuniary damage.

See also Börekçioğulları (Çökmez) and Others v. Turkey , no. 58650/00, 19 October 2006, Information Note no. 90, and I.R.S. and Others v. Turkey , no. 26338/95, 20 July 2004, Information Note no. 66.

© Council of Europe/European Court of Human Rights This summary by the Registry does not bind the Court.

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