(CN) - Two Greek Orthodox priests won seats on the boards of minority foundations in Istanbul, then watched Turkish officials remove them for being clergy, a move Europe's top human rights court ruled Tuesday had no clear basis in law.
The European Court of Human Rights found that Turkey violated the priests' freedom of association, read alongside protections for religious freedom, after authorities blocked them from serving on foundations overseeing churches, schools and other institutions tied to Istanbul's shrinking Greek Orthodox community.
The applicants, Orthodox priests Niko Mavrakis and Corc Kasapolu, had been elected in 2011 and 2012 to three community foundations. Turkish officials later removed them, arguing clergy could not sit on foundation boards because minority foundations were supposed to operate under a secular administrative structure.
European judges said Turkish authorities never pointed to any law actually imposing such a ban.
Instead, officials leaned on the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne, the post-World War I agreement that established protections for non-Muslim minorities in modern Turkey, arguing clergy status was incompatible with serving on minority foundation boards. The priests spent years stuck between Turkish administrative and civil courts, each side effectively saying the dispute belonged elsewhere. Turkey's Constitutional Court later found their rights had been violated, but the underlying problem was never resolved, pushing the case to the Strasbourg rights court.
The European court said authorities still failed to show any valid legal foundation for excluding the priests, pointing instead to "the complete absence of any clear, accessible and foreseeable legal basis capable of justifying the interference."
Under Turkish law, minority foundations oversee churches, schools, cemeteries and community property for non-Muslim groups including Greek Orthodox, Armenian and Jewish communities. For minorities whose populations have steadily dwindled over the last century, the foundations remain some of the last surviving pillars of communal life.
The judges stressed that "associations created in particular for the protection of cultural or spiritual heritage, the pursuit of social or economic objectives, the proclamation or teaching of a religion, or the assertion of an ethnic or minority identity, play an essential role in the functioning of a democratic society.
"Pluralism is indeed built on the genuine recognition and respect of cultural, ethnic and religious diversity, and harmonious interaction between persons and groups with different identities is essential for social cohesion," the court added.
The Strasbourg court awarded each applicant 2,000 euros (about $2,325) in damages and ordered Turkey to cover costs.
Once home to large Greek, Armenian and Jewish populations, Turkey has seen many of those communities shrink dramatically through expulsions, property disputes, political pressure and demographic decline stretching back decades. Only a few thousand Greek Orthodox Christians are believed to remain in Istanbul today, though their foundations still oversee some of the city's oldest churches, schools and religious properties.
Mine Yildirim, senior advisor on Turkey at the Norwegian Helsinki Committee, welcomed the ruling and called it "a clear example of the 'arbitrary' treatment of minorities in Turkey, particularly by state administration."
Yildirim said it was especially significant that the court found the interference "was not prescribed by law," adding that anti-discrimination protections remain weak for non-Muslim minorities inside Turkey. She also criticized the judges for declining to separately examine discrimination claims, arguing such a finding could have given the ruling greater force inside the Turkish legal system.
Minority Rights Group International likewise described the judgment as a landmark ruling and urged Turkish authorities to treat it as an opportunity for broader reform rather than simply paying compensation. The organization warned that excluding minority members from governing the institutions sustaining their religious and cultural life cuts directly into democratic pluralism itself.
"Religious minorities must be able to run their own communities - their churches, their foundations, their institutions, free from state interference," said Claire Thomas, the group's executive director, who called on Turkey to use the judgment to review the broader legal framework governing minority foundations.
Samim Akgnl, professor of Turkish studies at the University of Strasbourg, said the ruling carries symbolic weight far beyond the two priests because Istanbul's Greek Orthodox community has already been reduced to only a few thousand people after decades of demographic decline and pressure on minority institutions.
He said what stood out most was the government's attempt to use the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne, originally meant to protect non-Muslim minorities in modern Turkey, to justify excluding Orthodox clergy from the boards of their own community foundations.
"To use it as a basis for restricting the autonomy of the very communities it was meant to protect is to invert its original purpose," Akgnl said.
Akgnl added that the judgment could have larger implications because the court's reasoning was framed broadly enough to apply to other foundations too. "If tomorrow an Armenian priest, a rabbi, a Syriac monk or a Chaldean clergyman were excluded from a foundation board on the same grounds, the case would be all but pre-decided in Strasbourg," he said.
The judgment is not final yet. Both sides have three months to request referral to the court's Grand Chamber, though such appeals are accepted only rarely.
The applicants' lawyers and Turkey's Justice Ministry did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Courthouse News reporter Eunseo Hong is based in the Netherlands.
Source: Courthouse News Service
