At the time when the European Convention on Human Rights was signed, the basic perception of violations of human rights was based on the idea that states would commit these violations. However, today we see that these violations are carried out by other individuals as much as and sometimes more widely than states. On the other hand, both our international human rights texts and our constitutions did not contain clear provisions to combat, prevent or compensate for violations between individuals. For this reason, various courts, both at the national and international level, have tried to ensure that fundamental rights have an impact among individuals with their interpretation activities and case-laws. As a result of these efforts, the concepts of ‘horizontal effect’ on the effect of fundamental rights among citizens and ‘positive obligations’ of states, which are the main tools that provide this effect, have developed. Today, we are witnessing the development of law as a living entity in accordance with the changing world, social demands and needs. However, although the benefits of this development and rights- based interpretation cannot be ignored, the point of the interpretation activities of the courts creates controversy. The main sources of these discussions are to determine new obligations for the states that are not explicitly included in the existing positive regulations, to expand the scope of these regulations unlimitedly, to hold the states responsible with some obligations that exceed the positive limits of the text they signed in the international arena. In this study, the interpretation activities made by the European Court of Human Rights and the Turkish Constitutional Court will be mentioned, and positive obligations of the state in the context of the right to property will be examined.
Horizontal Effect, Positive Obligations, European Court of Human Rights, Turkish Constitutional Court, Right of Property
