Court cancels execution of expropriation decision in Istanbul's Fatih

ISTANBUL – Radikal

Fatih Municipality has applied urgent expropriation orders to several buildings located within the Fener-Balat-Ayvansaray Renovation Area. Hürriyet photo

The Council of State has canceled the execution of an urgent expropriation decision for an urban transformation project in Istanbul’s Fatih district, saying that a Cabinet decision on urgent expropriation was not justifiable.

The Council of State’s Sixth Department said that the renovation decision alone was not sufficient to take an urgent expropriation decision,” and added that the extraordinary conditions necessary for taking the decision of the urgent expropriation, as well as the public interest, were not present in this case. 

Fatih Municipality has applied urgent expropriation orders to several buildings located within the Fener-Balat-Ayvansaray Renovation Area. The managers of Plato Vocational High School, however, took the decision of urgent expropriation to the Council of State. 

The Fener-Balat-Ayvansaray Renovation preliminary project was approved by the Fatih Municipality council on Dec. 9, 2009. 

The Chambers of Architects filed a complaint to the Istanbul Fifth Administrative Court against the renovation plans. The court canceled the project on May 7, 2012, with the justifications that there was no public interest in the project and that it was damaging the neighbor relations, historical fabric and went against the urbanization principle. 

Fatih Municipality has now approved a new project and asked the cabinet to take an urgent expropriation decision for the area. 

Cabinet decided to take urgent expropriation decision on Sept. 10, 2012, on the grounds of Expropriation’s 27th article which allows this in cases of “defending the country or in extraordinary cases.” The cabinet’s decision affected properties in Molla Aşkı, Balat Karabaş, Atik Mustafa Paşa, Tahta Minare neighborhoods in the Fener-Balat-Ayvansaray project. One of these properties is Plato Vocational High School. The school management objected to the expropriation and demanded the cancelation of execution from the Council of State. The court canceled the execution as well as deciding that the cabinet’s decision on urgent expropriation was not lawful. 

The school’s lawyer Taha Ayhan, however, said that a cabinet decision on urgent expropriation was cancelled by a court for the first time in Turkey. 

“The property owners are having difficulties due to the urgent expropriation decisions taken for the renovation areas. We have suffered due to this method. We earned our right by filing a complaint,” said Ayhan.