A Greek appeals court has thrown out a nearly 5 million euro claim by Turkish nationals seeking compensation for propert...

A Greek appeals court has thrown out a nearly 5 million euro claim by Turkish nationals seeking compensation for properties seized in Rhodes over 80 years ago. The Dodecanese Court of Appeals, in ruling 164/2026, upheld a lower court decision rejecting the lawsuit brought by Nilgun Baray, a resident of Ankara, and the heirs of Abdurrahman Naci Akman against the Greek state. The properties in question, two cadastral plots in the Niochori area of Rhodes, were expropriated by order of the Italian governor on May 13, 1940, for public benefit purposes. After the 1947 Paris Peace Treaty, all Italian state property in the Dodecanese passed to Greece. The plots were absorbed into the Greek public estate in 1955, with portions later sold to private buyers and cooperatives. The first court had dismissed the claims on the grounds that the Turkish claimants lacked legal standing, since they themselves acknowledged the properties had been seized in 1940. The court also found that over 80 years of continuous, uncontested Greek state possession satisfied the requirements for adverse possession under the Dodecanese Land Registry Code. The claimants had argued the original expropriation was never completed lawfully, that they received no compensation or notification, and that the application of adverse possession against them violated the European Convention on Human Rights. They cited the 1993 ECHR case Papamichalopoulos v. Greece, which recognized that de facto expropriation without compensation constitutes a property rights violation. Greece countered that compensation had been arranged through a Mixed Economic Commission and deposited with the Bank of Greece back in 1940, and that more than eight decades of peaceful possession extinguished any remaining legal claim. The appeals court agreed, leaving the original ruling fully intact. The total claim rejected across all plaintiffs came to 4,746,792.20 euros. #Greece #Dodecanese #RhodesHistory