After exhausting all domestic remedies, Turkish-Greek citizens İrini Keçecioğlu, Fotini Keçecioğlu and Frideriki Keçecioğlu filed a lawsuit at the Strasbourg-based court in 2002 claiming that their three-story building in Beyoğlu’s Perşembepazarı neighborhood was unjustly seized by the municipality in 1986 as part of a rehabilitation program for the Golden Horn. The municipality had bought a few buildings in the area for preset prices at the time, but the Keçecioğlu family, among others, sued and demanded a reappraisal of their property, claiming that it was undervalued. Their request was initially approved by a local court, but the Supreme Court of Appeals overturned the decision and rejected the family’s petition.
Upon receiving the family’s petition eight years ago, the ECtHR first decided in 2008 that the plaintiffs should be compensated 9,000 euros for general damages and assessed another 7,000 euros in court costs to be paid by Turkey. The court at the time deferred the main verdict on pecuniary compensation to a later date. It ruled on Tuesday that the amount to be paid to the plaintiffs should be 2 million euros, saying that the İstanbul Municipality under then-Mayor Bedrettin Dalan, a chief coup suspect currently at large, violated Article 1 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), which lays out the responsibilities of signatories to the convention with respect to protecting property rights.
