Turkish Constitutional Court Rules That Property Expropriation Without Due Process or Payment Constitutes Violation of Property Rights

The Turkish Constitutional Court recently considered a claim that the Istanbul Water and Sewerage Administration ("IWSA") violated an applicant's property rights under Article 35 of the Constitution by confiscating property without completing expropriation procedures, or paying the expropriation price. In its decision, the Constitutional Court held that the applicant's property rights have been violated and the case should be re-examined to eliminate the consequences of the violation.

In the case at hand, the IWSA held an expropriation decision regarding the property, issued against a previous owner of the property. The previous owner had disputed the expropriation decision and the expropriation price was blocked in the previous owner's bank account. However, the property was later sold to the applicants, without any expropriation annotation existing in the land registry records. The administration later entered an expropriation annotation on the land registry