The European Court of Human Rights has accepted the application of the Sulukule Roma Association against a renovation project in the Fatih Municipality’s historical Sulukule area, despite the ongoing domestic court cases. It is a small but significant victory for the residents and associations. Because they have been saying all along that the project was indeed in violation not just of human rights but also of history. So much for the government 'Roma opening', the initiative with which Prime Minister Erdogan hoped to convince the Roma community that they are indeed part of the Turkish state. Except, well, they are not benefiting of the same rights. In this the Roma are in good company, first and foremost with the Kurdish people.

The association applied to the European Court on May 20 accusing the ongoing urban transformation project in Sulukule of violating six articles, namely: “protection of privacy and family life,” “prevention of discrimination,” “protection of property,” “right to fair trial,” “respect of human rights” and “right to have efficient application.”

Sulukule's 3,400 impoverished residents have been forced out under a gentrification project conceived, so the story went, as part of Istanbul's preparations for becoming the European city of culture in 2010. City officials deemed the work essential to transform a district blighted by drugs, prostitution, unemployment and illiteracy. But critics of the project have said all along it threatens the survival of a Roma population that is thought to have been in Sulukule since the time of Mehmet the Conqueror, the sultan who captured Istanbul, then known as Constantinople, from the Byzantines in 1453.

Turkey's Roma community dates back at least 1,000 years. Romas have traditionally eked out a living as street hawkers, shoemakers, musicians and dancers in a close-knit environment rendered all the more intimate by Sulukule's ramshackle network of low-rise houses.

That historic setting has been almost totally wiped out, campaigners say, by a blueprint that proposes several new four-storey blocks as well as 620 modern villas, a hotel and facelifts for 45 listed Ottoman houses.

Sulukule's 503 homeowners have been offered the new houses at discount prices by the local Fatih municipality, which is running the regeneration project along with the city council. But the Sulukule Platform, a protest group fighting to save the district's heritage, said few residents can afford it.

Its criticisms have won the backing of Unesco, which had warned that Istanbul could lose its world heritage site status.