The judgment of the European Court of Human Rights of 26 May 2026 in Mavrakis and Others v. Turkey addresses a matter concerning the organisational autonomy of religious minorities and the relationship between freedom of association, freedom of religion and administrative control over community foundations.

The applicants, Niko Mavrakis and Corc Kasapoğlu, both Greek Orthodox priests residing in Istanbul, had been elected in 2011 and 2012 to the boards of directors of three foundations belonging to the Greek Orthodox minority. Following those elections, the General Directorate of Foundations removed them from the board lists solely on account of their clerical status. The applicants therefore brought actions for annulment before the administrative courts, arguing that neither Turkish Law no. 5737 on foundations nor the implementing regulation provided for any incompatibility between ecclesiastical status and eligibility for the governing bodies of community foundations.

At first instance, the Istanbul administrative courts allowed the actions, holding that the Directorate had exceeded the limits of its powers: it could review the formal regularity of the elections, but it could not annul their results or unilaterally invalidate the election of persons regarded as ineligible. In one of those cases, the court further observed that the interference with the rights guaranteed by the Constitution and the Convention lacked a clear legal basis and did not appear necessary in a democratic society. Subsequently, however, the Turkish Council of State quashed those decisions not because it considered the removals lawful, but because it considered the dispute to fall within the jurisdiction of the ordinary civil courts, in so far as it related to the election of bodies of private-law entities. This led to a prolonged conflict over jurisdiction, which prevented the applicants from obtaining a decision on the merits of the lawfulness of their exclusion.

As regards the domestic constitutional remedies, in 2023 the Turkish Constitutional Court found, in respect of two of the three applications, a violation of freedom of association because of the excessive length of the proceedings and the persistent legal uncertainty, and awarded compensation for non-pecuniary damage. However, it did not examine the substantive core of the complaint, namely whether the applicants’ removal from the boards solely because they were priests was compatible with the Convention. In another set of proceedings, the same Constitutional Court declared the application inadmissible on the ground that domestic remedies had not been exhausted.

Before the Strasbourg Court, the applicants were first held to have retained victim status, since the domestic decisions had neither acknowledged nor redressed the alleged violation in relation to their exclusion from the boards of directors. The Court then dismissed the objections of lateness and non-exhaustion of domestic remedies, observing that the applicants had made reasonable use of the remedies available, first challenging the administrative act of the Directorate before the administrative courts and then applying to the Constitutional Court.

On the merits, the Court considered that the contested measure amounted to an interference with freedom of association under Article 11 ECHR, interpreted in the light of Article 9, because of the close link between participation in the management of community foundations and the religious life of the Greek Orthodox minority. Two of the three foundations concerned were directly connected with Orthodox churches, while the third concerned a historic school of the community.

The Court therefore focused its examination on whether the interference was lawful. In that regard, it noted first that no provision of Law no. 5737 of the 20^th February 2008 or of the regulation then in force prohibited members of the clergy from sitting on the boards of directors of community foundations. The eligibility conditions concerned only Turkish citizenship, majority age, residence in the electoral district, a minimum level of education and the absence of convictions for certain offences. It was undisputed that the applicants fulfilled those requirements.

Secondly, the Court found that the Directorate’s reliance on the Treaty of Lausanne and its annexes could not provide a legal basis for the exclusion: no domestic court had accepted that argument, and one of the administrative courts had expressly stated that clerical status could not, in the absence of a specific legislative provision, constitute a lawful obstacle to eligibility. Moreover, the Government had not produced any rule, circular or regulatory act from which the Directorate’s power to remove elected persons on account of their religious ministry might even implicitly be inferred.

Lastly, the Court observed that the Council of State itself, even while declining the jurisdiction of the administrative courts, had recognised that the Directorate did not have the power to annul or validate elections, but only to verify their formal compliance and, in the event of irregularities, to bring the matter before the civil courts. It followed that the contested act had been adopted ultra vires, without an adequate normative foundation.

On the basis of those arguments, the Court concluded that the interference had not been “prescribed by law” and that there had therefore been a violation of Article 11 ECHR, read in the light of Article 9. Having reached that conclusion, it considered it unnecessary to examine separately the complaints raised under Articles 6, 13 and 14 ECHR. Applying Article 41 ECHR, the Court awarded each applicant compensation for non-pecuniary damage.

The significance of the decision lies in its reaffirmation of several core principles of the Convention system. First, it confirms that freedom of association does not protect only the right to form or join an association, but also the possibility of taking an effective part in its internal life, especially in the appointment and administration of its governing bodies. Where the association represents a religious or minority community, this aspect becomes even more significant, because participation in governing bodies concerns not only an organizational interest, but also the ability to contribute to the preservation of the community’s collective identity, institutional continuity, and autonomy.

Second, the judgment makes clear that the organizational autonomy of community foundations, especially when intertwined with the religious life of a minority, cannot be curtailed by administrative action based on implicit interpretations or on alleged general principles that have not been translated into positive law. The Court does not merely criticize the concrete outcome of the removal; it stresses that a public authority is not entitled to interfere with such important individual positions without a sufficiently precise legal basis. This means that, in a context of protected religious pluralism, the administration does not enjoy a free margin of assessment based on expediency, practice, or expansive readings of the legal framework: any measure affecting the composition of the governing bodies of a community foundation must have an express and identifiable basis in domestic law.

Finally, the judgment confirms that the Convention requirement that an interference be prescribed by law imposes particularly strict standards of clarity, accessibility, and foreseeability, especially where rights linked to religious pluralism and the protection of minorities are at stake. The point is not merely that a rule must exist, but that it must allow those concerned to reasonably foresee the consequences of their conduct and to understand in advance when and how public authorities may intervene. From this perspective, the decision is important not only for the Turkish context, but more broadly for all situations in which the administrative regulation of religious communities risks becoming a tool for restricting their internal autonomy. The Court thus shows that Convention protection is not limited to preventing overt discrimination, but also includes scrutiny of the quality of the legal basis for interference, since effective protection of pluralism depends on that very point.

 

(Comment by Martina D'Onofrio)