Turkey signals plans to change to minority bill

ANKARA, Jan 10 (Reuters) Turkey signalled today it could amend a bill on minority foundations after the European Court of Human Rights ordered Turkey to give back property confiscated from an ethnic Greek school foundation.

The court, based in Strasbourg, France, told Turkey on Tuesday to return the property or pay more than one million dollar in compensation for infringing the foundation's property rights.

The ruling followed a complaint filed by Fener Rum Erkek Lisesi Vakfi, a foundation operating the Greek high school in Istanbul, against a Turkish government decision that it did not meet the legal conditions for owning property.

The decision coincides with increased pressure on European Union candidate Turkey from Brussels to improve the rights of its religious and ethnic minorities.

''I will bring this issue to the cabinet. We will re-evaluate the situation and decide what to do in line with the ECHR ruling,'' the state Anatolian news agency quoted Deputy Prime Minister Mehmet Ali Sahin as saying.

Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan's centre-right government approved a foundations bill late last year in a bid to deflect EU criticism of its rights record. But President Ahmet Necdet Sezer vetoed the bill and asked parliament to reconsider it.

Sezer and Turkish nationalists feared the bill might undermine the state and its secular structures, but EU experts had criticised it as too weak and half-hearted.

Sahin said the bill might now be changed to allow payment of compensation to minority foundations whose properties had been confiscated and then sold on to third parties.

Turkey could face a much larger bill if it fails to amend the law, Sahin said, adding parliament would re-examine the bill in the coming months. Sezer will retire as president in May and is expected to be replaced by somebody from the ruling AK Party.

The Greek school, part of a building in the historic Beyoglu area of Istanbul, had been acquired by the foundation through a 1952 bequest. After lengthy legal procedures, the foundation effectively lost its use of the property in 2002.

The European Court of Human Rights ruled that the foundation's property rights had been violated by the Turkish government and ordered it to restore the property or pay 890,000 euros compensation and 20,000 euros costs.

Another property owned by the foundation in the Goztepe district of Istanbul was also confiscated, but the court considered that a separate case.

Reuters BDP GC2104