Claiming Genocide reparations before the ECHR

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to address the issue of the possibility of successfully claiming genocide reparations from Turkey before the European Court of Human Rights. For finding out whether the victims of expropriations can claim compensation in the European Court of Human Rights (‘the Court’) I am going to examine respective cases where analogous issues have been determined. Particularly, it is revealed in Pressos Compania Naviera S.A. and others v. Belgium that taking property from the owner without reasonable compensation is a violation. In Jahn and others v. Germany, the Court found that the lack of compensation is not per se a violation if there are exceptional circumstances justifying it. This possibility was first accepted by the Court in Lithgow and others v. The United Kingdom where it stipulated that depriving a person of property must strike a fair balance between demands of general public interests and an individual’s fundamental rights. Though these cases may seem to contradict each other, indeed they are mutually complementing and we will analyze how they apply to the Armenian case. Another group of cases is adduced for exploring the feasibility of application of the Convention to the facts preceding the ratification or even drafting of this Convention. In Acimovic v. Croatia and in Bletic v. Croatia the Court concluded that such application is not possible as it would violate general principles of international law. However, in Loizidou v. Turkey, Cyprus v. Turkey, Almeida Garrett v. Portugal, Broniowski v. Poland, and Preussische Treuhand GmbH & Co. KG a.A v. Poland the Court admitted that in the cases of continuous violation retroactive application of the Convention is possible. Importantly facts in the latter two cases have started before the Convention was drafted. For the purposes of the current research, the unlawful expropriations of Armenian property will be referred to as the ‘Armenian case’. The instant research may ultimately assist those who have suffered from the unlawful actions, i.e. deprivation of properties without any compensation, of the Ottoman Empire and subsequently the Republic of Turkey in determining to claim violation of the right to property before the Court and in assessing whether their case falls under the Court’s jurisdiction. For that purpose first of all evidence concerning the expropriation of the tremendous amount of Armenian property is adduced and examined. Then the issue of the existence of the right to property in the Armenian case is investigated. In the third chapter, the compatibility of the Armenian case with the Court’s jurisdiction is decided.