Turkish authorities continue to defy top court ruling on Armenian church foundation’s property rights
Turkish authorities have continued to defy a Constitutional Court ruling that recognizes the Vakıflıköy Armenian Church Foundation’s property rights, refusing to return contested real estate despite a legal mandate, the Agos news website reported on Friday.
The court had ruled that the Armenian foundation’s property rights were violated and that it should be eligible for restitution under Turkey’s Foundations Law (No. 5737). In line with this decision, Turkey’s Council of State (Danıştay) reviewed the case and referred it to the Hatay 1st Administrative Court for reconsideration. On November 19, 2024 the Hatay court formally notified the Directorate General of Foundations that it must act in accordance with the ruling.
However, before this official notification was even issued, the Foundations Council convened on November 11, 2024 and preemptively rejected the restitution request, ignoring the Constitutional Court’s ruling. The council reiterated the same reasoning that the Constitutional Court had already ruled unconstitutional, stating that since the Vakıflıköy Armenian Church Foundation was not included in what is known as the 1936 Declaration, it could not reclaim the properties.
On November 27, 2024 the foundation was formally notified that its restitution request had been denied, confirming that state authorities refused to comply with the top court’s decision. Legal experts and minority rights advocates have criticized the move, calling it a direct challenge to the rule of law.
“The Constitutional Court’s ruling is binding, and failure to comply is unconstitutional,” Sebu Aslangil, the foundation’s lawyer, said. The foundation has since filed a criminal complaint with the Ankara Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office, accusing members of the Foundations Council of violating constitutional law by failing to implement the court’s decision.
At the heart of the dispute is a decades-old legal framework that has been used to justify property confiscations from Turkey’s non-Muslim minorities.
In 1936, the Turkish government required all minority religious foundations to submit a declaration of their properties (the 1936 Declaration). Over the following decades, courts and state institutions used this declaration as a restrictive legal tool, ruling that minorities could not acquire new properties and that any properties not explicitly listed in the declaration could be seized by the state.
However, in this case, the Vakıflıköy Armenian Church Foundation was not part of Turkey in 1936 since Hatay only joined the republic in 1939. As a result, the foundation could not have possibly submitted a declaration, making the requirement legally impossible to fulfill.
Despite this, the Foundations Council has continued to apply the 1936 Declaration requirement, even though the Constitutional Court ruled that this violated the foundation’s property rights and imposed an unrealistic burden on the community.
The Vakıflıköy Armenian Church Foundation’s struggle is part of a broader trend in Turkey, where Greek, Armenian and Jewish minority foundations have faced systematic property confiscations due to bureaucratic and legal obstacles.
While reforms to the 2008 Foundations Law (No. 5737) were meant to restore some seized properties, implementation has been inconsistent, and many claims have been rejected on technical grounds.
The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) previously ruled against Turkey in similar cases, leading to some property restitutions. However, in many instances, state institutions have continued to delay or resist implementing court orders.
