PAKSOY AND OTHERS v. TURKEY
Inadmissible
Julia Laffranque;Nebojša Vučinić;Paul Lemmens;Stéphanie Mourou-Vikström;Ksenija Turković
1. The applicants, Mr Maksut Paksoy, Ms Güler Ayabakan, Ms Alime Aydede, Ms Mebzul Dalbudak, Mr Ahmet Melih Dedeköy, Ms Mahiser Şamlıoğlu, Mr Mustafa Sezdi, Mr Hacı Abdi Sezdi, Mr Mükremin Sezdi, Ms Ulviye Sezdi (Birol), Ms Dürdane Sezdi (Saydam), Ms Emine Sezdi (Şentürk), Mr İhsan Yazıcı, Mr İsmail Mehmet Yazıcı and Ms Ayşe Yazıcı, are fifteen Turkish nationals. They were born in 1940, 1950, 1932, 1945, 1980, 1948, 1943, 1952, 1954, 1956, 1947, 1943, 1934, 1967 and 1968 respectively. They were represented before the Court by Ms Bahar Argın, a lawyer practising in Istanbul. 2. s, may be summarised as follows. 3. A plot of land in Avcılar, in the Merkez District of Istanbul, was registered in the land register as plot no. 23, parcel no. 4354, in the name of Maksut Paksoy and Ömer Paksoy, the applicants’ predecessors. 4. In 1978, the plot of land in question was designated as a primary school area in the local land development plan. The designation of the plot of land remained unchanged in subsequent plans drawn up between 1978 and 2007. 5. On 26 March 2007 the applicants applied to the municipality to have the local land development plan altered. On 8 October 2007 the municipality rejected the applicants’ request. 6. On 3 January 2008 the applicants instituted proceedings before the Istanbul Administrative Court seeking to have the local land development plan annulled. On 15 January 2008 the Istanbul Administrative Court dismissed the applicants’ case. 7. On 11 March 2008 the applicants instituted another set of proceedings before the Küçükçekmece Civil Court of First Instance, claiming compensation for the decrease in the market value of the land and the long-term uncertainty about the fate of the land. On 16 July 2008 the court dismissed the case, holding that the authorities had not seized the land in question. An appeal and a request for rectification lodged by the applicants were subsequently rejected by the Court of Cassation, and the decision became final on 15 October 2009. 8. According to section 3 of the Zoning Act (Law no. 3194), land cannot be used for any purpose other than that indicated in the local land development plans. 9. Section 10(1) of the same Act provides that the municipalities should prepare their five-year zoning programmes within three months of the entry into force of local land development plans. Land which falls within those programmes and which is accordingly assigned to the relevant public administrative authorities should be expropriated during the period in question. A description of the relevant domestic law may be found in Hüseyin Kaplan v. Turkey (no. 24508/09, §§ 25 and 26, 1 October 2013). 10. The object of Law no. 6384 was to provide for the settlement, by means of compensation, of applications lodged with the Court concerning length of judicial proceedings, and non-enforcement or delayed enforcement of judicial decisions. A Compensation Commission was set up for that purpose. A full description of the relevant domestic law may be found in Turgut and Others v. Turkey ((dec.), no. 4860/09, §§ 19-26, 26 March 2013). 11. The competence ratione materiae of the Compensation Commission was subsequently extended by a decree which came into force on 16 March 2014. The decree extended the competence of the Compensation Commission to the examination of other complaints, such as alleged restriction of the right of detainees to correspondence in a language other than Turkish and the prison authorities’ refusal, on different grounds, to hand over periodicals. A full description of the relevant domestic law may be found in Yıldız and Yanak v. Turkey ((dec.), no. 44013/07, §§ 9-17, 27 May 2014). 12. The Turkish Council of Ministers issued a decree which came into force on 9 March 2016. The decree extended anew the competence ratione materiae of the Compensation Commission. 13. The Compensation Commission is now entitled to examine the following subjects under Article 4 of the decree, which reads as follows: “a) Applications concerning an alleged violation of the right to peaceful enjoyment of possessions on account of the annulment of an applicant’s title deeds because his or her land was classified as part of the public forest area, or as a result of the application of section 2/B of Law no. 6831, or because the land was classified as part of the public forest area in cadastral surveys; b) Applications concerning an alleged violation of the right to peaceful enjoyment of possessions on account of the annulment of an applicant’s title deeds because the impugned land was classified as located within a coastal area; c) Applications concerning an alleged violation of the right to peaceful enjoyment of possessions on account of the allocation of the impugned land for public use in local land development plans; d) Applications concerning an alleged breach of an applicant’s right to private and family life on account of the respective disciplinary sanctions imposed on detainees and convicted persons by the prison authorities; e) Applications concerning an alleged breach of the right to respect for correspondence on account of the prison administration’s refusal to receive or send letters or similar correspondence drafted in Turkish.”