Foundations of Non-Muslim Communities: The Last Object of Confiscation

This article focuses on a specific component of the expropriation of property from non-Muslim minorities that began the Armenian Genocide and similar expropriations from Greeks, the long period of dispossession of the property of non-Muslim foundations resulting from use of the 1936 requirement that all non-Muslim foundations provide the government a list of their immovable properties and go through a complex permitting process regarding property acquisition. This has been an important part of the capital accumulation process in the Turkish Republic for decades. The confiscations beginning in the late 1960s constitute a continuous breach due to the fact that these properties have never been returned to their owners. As result, these claims for the return of such property could be taken to the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR).