Ownership of Sansaryan Han (Inn) in the heart of Istanbul may be returned to the Armenian community after the announcement of a ruling by the Constitutional Court this week.
The historic building in Istanbul’s Fatih district was at the center of a dispute for a long time. The court, the highest legal body for review of rulings by lower courts, ruled that a lower court’s rejection of a lawsuit for annulment of another lawsuit for the property’s handover to local administrations in Istanbul was a “violation of property rights.”
The inn is named after Armenian merchant Mıgırdiç Sansaryan who built it in the 19th century. Sansaryan was the founder of a foundation established in 1901 that aimed to cover the educational expenses of impoverished Armenian children. The foundation’s charter included a clause that said it belonged to the Armenian Patriarchate. The inn was registered in the name of the foundation in 1929, but the Istanbul Provincial Special Administration (a branch of the local governorate that acts as a type of “treasury” for the province) filed a lawsuit to seize its ownership and took over its administration. In 1952, its ownership was registered to the administration.
The inn triggered another lawsuit in 1985, this time between the General Directorate of Land Registry and Cadastre and the administration. The directorate won it and took over the ownership. However, in 2011, it faced a lawsuit, this time from the Armenian Patriarchate, seeking to annul the title deed and its registration to the Patriarchate. When the court rejected its demand, the Sansaryan Foundation appealed to the Constitutional Court on the grounds of violation of their rights. The court sided with the foundation and referred the case to the lower court for a retrial.
The top court said in its ruling that the Constitution grants property and inheritance rights to each citizen and these rights can be “limited only if such limitation is for the greater good,” citing that execution of property rights, in this case, was not something violating the greater good principle. The court further said limitation of rights can only be executed by judiciary organs, not by bureaucracy in democracies. The ruling said earlier verdicts on the case were based on a broader interpretation of laws and the interference with the plaintiff’s property rights did not have a legal basis.
In a statement on a social media post, the Armenian Patriarchate hailed the review by the Constitutional Court, which “proved our rightfulness.”
“We are pleased that the Court issued a fair, conscious ruling,” the statement said.
Sansaryan Inn has long been allocated to Istanbul police, serving as a detention center. Prominent political activists were reportedly tortured in the inn in the past.
Türkiye is home to multiple ethnic and religious communities, which are usually referred to as "minorities" in law. There are 167 minority foundations in the country, including 77 Greek-Orthodox, 54 Armenian, 19 Jewish, 10 Syriac, three Chaldean, two Bulgarian, one Georgian and one Maronite organization. In the past decades, Türkiye has moved to reinstate the rights of minorities and help their survival as their numbers have dwindled over time. Long treated as second-class citizens, the Greek, Jewish, Armenian and Syrian communities have praised the return of their rights, though they have complained about it being a slow process.
The foundations of non-Muslim minorities have a legal status under the Lausanne Peace Treaty of 1923, which granted them equality before laws and freedom to establish and run “religious and social institutions.” A 1936 charter paved the way for foundations to acquire properties but a 1974 court ruling reversed the process, enabling the state to seize the properties minorities acquired after 1936. Properties were mostly returned to their original owners and in the absence of owners, they were taken by the Treasury.
