expropriations – Syria Report

Article 10 of Expropriation Law No. 20 of 1983 allows for the expropriation of lands that have not undergone delimitation and census – that is, real estate with no Land Record. For this to occur, from the outset, only the lands included in the expropriation must undergo delimitation and census. However, the expropriating party may also take possession of a property before this process.

The government delineated the delimitation and census process in Decree No. 186 of 1926, which concerns lands that still need to be included in the Land Registry. The process results in establishing a Land Record for real estate in a given area, assigning them property numbers, and submitting the owners’ names to Cadastral Affairs.

Council of Ministers Communique, issued in 1982, defines the procedures for expropriating real estate in areas that have yet to undergo delimitation and census. The expropriating public entity must announce its expropriation decree via its main headquarters and in the public square of the village where the targeted land is located. This entity then must provide the relevant real estate department with a copy of the expropriation decree, alongside a request to launch delimitation and census work on the expropriated property.

A real estate judge must sign the delimitation and census work decision to proceed with the job at hand, after which the General Directorate of Cadastral Affairs and the expropriating entity are informed.

The Land Registry directorate tasks a survey team of specialised engineers, legal advisers, and other employees to carry out delimitation and census. The Land Registry’s delimitation and census office opens a dedicated register for the targeted properties to record the entire process and submit the final plans and survey records to the Land Registry’s secretariat.

The Directorate of State Properties, which is part of the Ministry of Agriculture, must also be represented as the survey team does its work so that it can provide any information or documents related to its rights and register any of its own objections. This right does not extend to the owner of the expropriated property. The Directorate of State Properties is in charge of inventorying, managing, and investing state-owned properties and opening and regulating registrations on that governorate’s real estate and public properties. The directorate also regulates the disposal, transfer of ownership, and registration of state-owned properties.

Once the work of delimitation and census is complete, the dossiers for the expropriated properties are submitted to the delimitation and census office for technical and legal review. The office then notifies the real estate judge of any deficiencies that must be resolved. The dossiers include survey and location plans for the property and notes on delimitation and census, such as a description of the property, its location, legal type, boundaries, owners’ names, any objections to those boundaries, and any other documents and papers provided by various parties.

The real estate judge announces when delimitation and census work has been completed, informs the relevant authorities, and sets a 10-day deadline for any objections. Only public entities may submit complaints, with owners and other rights holders excluded. In the eyes of the law, the property has become expropriated and is no longer privately owned. For objections to delimitation and census of properties that have not been expropriated, the deadline is 30 days.

Following the deadline for expropriated properties, the real estate judge announces their final decision and begins to read through the objections.

Relevant authorities must be notified of the final decision, and a copy of the decision must be posted to the door of the Real Estate Court. It does not need to be published in the Official Gazette. Afterwards, the decision is approved and sent directly to the secretariat of Cadastral Affairs to undergo any necessary procedures.

The owner of the expropriated property is excluded from these procedures. They also are not represented during this process even though the property has not yet been registered in the name of the expropriating entity. Though the owner should be allowed to intervene and present objections during delimitation and census, jurisprudence No. 325/326 of 1982 of the Supreme Administrative Court affirms that such owners are barred from this right. The court argues that this is because owners of exropriated properties have no relation to the delimitation and census process, which does not deprive them of their right to collect compensation on a set date.

Furthermore, expropriation allowances are not handed over to the expropriated property owners until after the delimitation and census procedure is complete, according to State Council Opinion No. 14 of 1973. This process can take years, negatively impacting the owner by barring them from their right to object and delaying their compensation.

The Aleppo City Council in October issued decision No. 586, renewing the leases of more than 1,000 tenants of shops and other municipally owned properties in the Bahastiya neighbourhood, according to the state-run Tishreen newspaper. Bahastiya is located in Aleppo’s seventh real estate zone.

Bahastiya Street, the neighbourhood’s main thoroughfare, dates to the 14th century and is named after the Mamluk-era Bahastiya Mosque. The area sits within the larger Bab Al-Faraj district, part of the Old City of Aleppo. It underwent modernisation towards the end of the Ottoman era and became famous for its bars and brothels, which were licensed by Ottoman authorities in the early 1900s. After independence, Syrian authorities cancelled those licenses, but the brothels continued operating into the 1970s.

The neighbourhood was also home to many Jewish families since the 1400s, though they emigrated gradually in the 1940s. Most of the properties owned by the Aleppo City Council in Bahastiya originally belonged to those Jewish residents. However, it is unclear how the state expropriated those properties or whether it compensated the owners.

The city council leased these shops and other properties under the old Tenancy Law No. 111 of 1952 and its amendments. According to Law No. 11, tenants of such properties may not be evicted as long as they are committed to paying rent, which is usually very low. These properties are also subject to compulsory extension, meaning that their lease contracts may be extended whether or not the lessor — in this case, the local administrative unit — wants to do so. Law No. 111 grants administrative units the right to re-appraise the values of these lease contracts every three years through a court-appointed committee.

However, under decision No. 78 of 2018, issued by Aleppo City Council’s executive office, the council ended this tenancy relationship unilaterally. Decision No. 78 considered the tenants to have “placed a hand” on the properties and demanded that they “make the equivalent payment” – meaning that the council saw these properties as being under the control of their current occupants – and then they must pay rents comparable to those typical of the area. In addition, the termination of the tenancy relationship was unilateral, meaning that decision No. 78 was issued without accounting for the tenants’ opinions in revoking their contracts.

Then the city executive office issued decision No. 69 in 2020, which ended all tenancy relationships between the city council and owners or occupants of expropriated real estate. According to decision No. 69, this did not mean the eviction of those occupants but rather that they would now be obliged to pay rents comparable to typical rental payments in the area.

Several of these tenants subsequently filed lawsuits against the city council in which they objected to the unilateral cancellation of their tenancy relationship and said the council’s decision to raise their rents was illegal.

Most recently, decision No. 586 of 2022 cancelled the previous decisions No. 78 and 69. It called on the properties in question to be re-appraised so long as the tenants drop their lawsuits against the city council. Since Tenancy Law No. 111 of 1952 has not been in effect since 2011, it is not clear what the legal basis was for Decision No. 586 to renew the leasing relationship with tenants.

The Aleppo City Council’s executive office member told Tishreen that decision No. 586 corrected the previous decisions and straightened matters out. The move was based on Decree No. 13 of 2022, which granted tax exemptions and other wide-ranging concessions within old city centres in Aleppo, Homs and Deir-ez-Zor governorates, including within historic souk districts. However, the exact relationship between Resolution No. 586 and Decree No. 13 for the leased properties in Aleppo remains unclear, except for some tax exemptions enacted in recent years.

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