## Facts

- Titina Loizidou, a Greek Cypriot from Kyrenia in northern Cyprus, owned immovable property there before 1974.
- After the 1974 Turkish military intervention and the island’s de facto partition, she was displaced to southern Cyprus and was prevented from returning to, accessing, or using her property.
- She alleged continuing interference with property and home rights in northern Cyprus and also alleged mistreatment and detention during a 1989 protest near the buffer zone.
- In 1989, she filed an individual petition against Turkey under the European Convention on Human Rights.
- Turkey had accepted the individual-petition and court-jurisdiction mechanisms by unilateral declarations, but attempted to limit those acceptances to acts occurring within Turkey’s own territory and to matters arising after a specified date.
- The case reached the European Court of Human Rights on preliminary objections, including abuse of process, jurisdiction and territorial scope, temporal scope, and Turkey’s claim that responsibility lay with the “Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus.”

## Issues

1. Whether the application or its referral to the court constituted an abuse of Convention procedure.
2. Whether Turkey could deny being the respondent state by attributing responsibility to the authorities in northern Cyprus.
3. Whether alleged acts in northern Cyprus were capable of falling within Turkey’s “jurisdiction” for Convention purposes.
4. Whether Turkey’s territorial limitations attached to its declarations accepting the petition and court-jurisdiction mechanisms were valid.
5. Whether the court lacked temporal jurisdiction because key events began before Turkey’s acceptance of compulsory jurisdiction, or whether the objection should be decided with the merits.

## Decision

- The court rejected the abuse-of-process objection.
- The court held Turkey was the respondent state and could not recharacterize its role to avoid review.
- By a substantial majority, the court held the alleged facts were capable of falling within Turkey’s Convention “jurisdiction,” permitting examination of conduct in northern Cyprus.
- By the same majority, the court held Turkey’s territorial restrictions on its declarations were invalid, while treating the declarations themselves as effective acceptances of the relevant mechanisms.
- The court did not resolve the temporal-jurisdiction objection at the preliminary stage and joined it to the merits.

## Legal Principles

- A contracting state cannot unilaterally redefine its standing before the court to avoid being treated as the respondent for an individual petition properly brought against it.
- Convention “jurisdiction,” though primarily territorial, may extend to acts and omissions occurring outside a state’s national territory where the state’s authorities exercise effective control in fact; at the preliminary stage, it is sufficient that allegations are capable of falling within that jurisdictional concept.
- Territorial limitations attached to unilateral declarations accepting Convention supervisory mechanisms are invalid when they conflict with the object and purpose of effective international supervision; invalid restrictions can be severed while leaving the acceptance operative.
- Temporal-jurisdiction objections closely tied to whether alleged violations are continuing may be deferred and decided with the merits rather than at the preliminary-objections stage.

## Conclusion

The court allowed the case to proceed by rejecting abuse and standing objections, recognizing that allegations concerning northern Cyprus could fall within Turkey’s Convention jurisdiction, and invalidating Turkey’s attempted territorial carve-outs from its jurisdiction-acceptance declarations, while postponing the temporal-jurisdiction question to the merits.


Loizidou v. Turk., 310 Eur. Ct. H.R. (ser. A) 7 (1995)