7.  The facts of the case, as submitted by the parties, and as they appear from the documents submitted by them may be summarised as follows. 8.  The applicants and/or their relatives were owners of apartments in Yalova. The permits for the building of those apartments were issued on 23 March 1987. 9.  On 17 August 1999 an earthquake of a magnitude of 7.4 on the Richter scale hit the city of Yalova, causing the collapse of the applicants’ apartments (see M. Özel and Others v. Turkey, no. 14350/05 and 2 others, 17 November 2015, and Hayati Çelebi and Others v. Turkey, no. 582/05, 9 February 2016, for further details about the earthquake). 10.  On different dates in 1999 and 2000 the applicants brought actions for compensation against the contractors responsible for their apartments and their business associates before the Yalova Civil Court (see appended table for some details of the proceedings). 11.  The applicants maintained, in their petition to the court, that the defendants had failed to construct their apartments in conformity with the applicable laws and regulations and therefore they must be held liable for the losses they had caused in accordance with section 41 of the Code of Obligations (Law no. 818) in force at the material time (“the former Code of Obligations”) (see paragraph 21 below). The applicants claimed pecuniary damages with interest starting from the date of the earthquake and reserved their right to further compensation. 12.  By decisions dated 19 July 2001, the Yalova Civil Court dismissed the claims, without an examination on the merits, and held that they had been introduced out of time. It held that the ten-year limitation period for introducing an action for damages, provided in sections 125 and 126 § 4 of the former Code of Obligations, had started running from the date on which the building use permit had been issued, that is 23 March 1987, and that the lawsuit had been filed after the expiry of the limitation period. 13.  The relevant parts of the court’s decision read as follows:
“(...) As a result of the earthquake of 17 August 1999 the apartment that the claimant bought from the defendants was damaged and collapsed. The representatives of the claimant filed the present lawsuit to claim the value of the damaged apartment. It is a known phenomenon that Turkey is located in an earthquake zone. Therefore, earthquake-resistant buildings must be built. The public conscience has been hurt because of the earthquake. Due to the pain, suffering and losses caused by such an incident it is expected that justice be served. And the judge must be conscious of his responsibility towards society in his or her actions. However, when justice is being served, objective and subjective elements in the laws are taken into account. The judge is bound by the legal rules. Doing the opposite would be against the law.
Thus, the judgment of the 2nd Criminal Chamber of the Court of Cassation No. E (2001/7015) and 2001/4778, dated 21 March 2001, shows the most correct and clear path by holding: “(...) whereas, for a building, it is necessary to prepare the plan and the project, especially to make healthy static calculations, to build the building in accordance with such plan and project by using appropriate material in terms of both quality and quantity, and to inspect the compliance of all these features with the legislation in force; (...) that for example in a building considered as having a hidden defect, section 125 of the Code of Obligations, by the reference to the fourth paragraph of section 126 of the same law, prescribes a ten-year limitation period which starts from the date of the end of the construction works, that is the date of obtaining the building use permit or the date it is supposed to have been obtained; and that if the building collapses during this period, criminal liability may be invoked; but if the building collapses after the expiry of this period due to a defect because the criminal liability of the (authors) can no longer be invoked in so far as legally they no longer have the faculty to solve the problem, it is considered that there is no longer a causal link; that these considerations are also valid in case of grave fault (...).” Our court also endorses this approach.
It is observed that the building use permit for the building of the claimant’s apartment was obtained on 23 March 1987. The ten-year limitation period for filing a lawsuit has elapsed a long time ago. For the purposes of the economy of the procedure and to the extent that there would be no impact on the result, an on-site survey was not ordered. The unfounded objections of the claimant’s representatives [against this decision] were [thus] inadmissible.
In conclusion, while the claimant’s representatives claimed compensation for the damaged apartment, their claim must be rejected because of the expiry of the ten-year limitation period (...).” 14.  On 9 December 2003 the applicants lodged an appeal against the Yalova Civil Court’s decision with the Court of Cassation. In their petition of appeal, they firstly argued that even if the dates of the building use permit were to be taken as the starting period of the ten-year limitation period, because the permit issued for their apartments had been renewed in the 1990s, they had introduced their actions within time. They further maintained that, in any event, the date of the earthquake should have been taken as the starting point of the limitation period since the damage caused by the hidden defects in their buildings had become known to them upon the occurrence of the earthquake. 15.  On different dates in 2004 and 2005 (see appended table) the 13th Civil Chamber of the Court of Cassation upheld the Yalova Civil Court’s decisions of 19 July 2001. The 13th Civil Chamber ruled that, having regard to the documents and evidence in the case file, which were relied on by the first-instance court, and in particular to the expiry of the limitation period prescribed by section 125 of the former Code of Obligations, which started running from the date of the transfer of ownership of the properties in question, the applicants’ grounds for appeal had been unfounded. 16.  Meanwhile, on 1 July 2004, the 4th Civil Chamber of the Court of Cassation, in a similar case lodged by the applicants’ representative on behalf of other claimants, held that the limitation periods for claiming damages started running from the date of the earthquake, since at the time the unlawful act was committed by the defendants, that is, when the construction of the defective buildings was completed, the claimants had not suffered any actual loss. The 4th Civil Chamber, by applying section 60 of the former Code of Obligations, ruled that the claimants’ action had been introduced less than one year following the occurrence of the earthquake and therefore it had been introduced within the one-year limitation period. On that basis, it quashed the first-instance court’s judgment which had found, applying section 125 of the former Code of Obligations, that the lawsuit had been introduced following the expiry of a period of ten years from the issuance of the building use permit (see Hayati Çelebi and Others, cited above, § 37, for the relevant parts of a similar decision by the 4th Civil Chamber of the Court of Cassation dated 11 December 2001). 17.  On 5 September 2004 the applicants, except Mr Süleyman Öner Erdoğan, Mr Can Erdoğan and Ms Nevzer Zorlu, referring to, inter alia, the 4th Civil Chamber of the Court of Cassation’s decision of 1 July 2004 (see paragraph 16 above), made an application to the First Presidency of the Court of Cassation requesting the harmonisation of the case-law of the 4th and 13th Civil Chambers of the Court of Cassation on the application of the limitation period to claims for damages arising from the earthquake of 17 August 1999. 18.  On the same date, all applicants, except Ms Nevzer Zorlu, requested rectification of the 13th Civil Chamber of the Court of Cassation’s decisions, drawing its attention to the discrepancy between its approach and that of the 4th Civil Chamber in respect of the starting date of the limitation periods. They also asked the 13th Civil Chamber to wait for the outcome of their application to the First Presidency of the Court of Cassation for harmonisation of the case-law. 19.  On 23 June 2005 the First Presidency of the Court of Cassation dismissed the applicants’ application, holding that there was no need for harmonisation of the case-law having regard to the content and nature of the judgments in question. 20.  On unspecified dates in 2005 the 13th Civil Chamber dismissed the applicants’ request for rectification.