THE EUROPEAN Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has rejected an application by Archbishop Chrysostomos II against Turkey, on behalf of the Church of Cyprus and its followers, over violations of their rights to enjoy property, and holding religious services.
The ECHR ruled that in accordance with a previous ruling, Chrysostomos should apply to the Turkish Cypriot breakaway state’s compensation commission.
In the application, filed through lawyer and DIKO MP Andreas Angelides in 2009, the Church leader complained that because of the Turkish invasion of 1974, the Church and its parishioners had to leave behind property and flee places of worship.
The property consists of monasteries, chapels, churches and graveyards etc as well as ecclesiastical vessels and other religious artifacts.
Since 1974, Chrysostomos said worshippers have been prevented from enjoying the Church’s property while many properties had been destroyed, vandalised, looted or stripped of their religious function and are now used as Muslim religious sites, museums, bars, clubs and barns. Religious artifacts have been destroyed or sold.
In its ruling, the ECHR said it could not accept the Archbishop’s claim that he represented all parishioners concerned by the application.
“The Court observes … that he has neither included a list of the names of those concerned, nor any letters of authority which state that these persons authorise him to act on their behalf, the ECHR ruling said. “It also appears that the title deeds submitted with the application in many cases identify individual local churches and religious bodies as owning the property without reference to the applicant or his Church.”
The ECHR said it could not consider that the parishioners – “an unlisted and unidentified group of persons” – can be regarded as applicants in this case.
But the ECHR did recognise that Chrysostomos had the authority to act on behalf of the Church as an entity and “he thus has legal capacity to make property and other claims on its behalf and on behalf of those individual churches and religious bodies under its umbrella.”
It went on to cite the Demopoulos decision of March 1, 2010, based on which the ECHR ruled that any Greek Cypriots with complaints over their lost properties should seek compensation by the commission in the north.
The court also found that complaints regarding the inability to carry out religious services on the properties “are closely linked to those … concerning the inability to enjoy the property concerned.”
“It has found that domestic remedies in this regard have not been exhausted before the IPC which is able both to order restitution of property and to award pecuniary and non-pecuniary damages in respect of any loss of enjoyment of the property. In the circumstances therefore, this part of the application raises no separate issue.”
The ECHR it has no jurisdiction to consider the complaints regarding vandalism and theft as these acts occurred before 1987, when Turkey ratified the Convention.
The application was unanimously declared inadmissible.
