24 CYPRUS v. TURKEY JUDGMENT observed in this regard that, to the extent that the applicant Government alleged that the complaints set out in the application resulted from administrative practices imputable to the respondent State, proof of the existence of such practices depended on the absence of effective remedies in relation to the acts alleged to constitute the said practices. 88. Having regard to these considerations, the Commission concluded that, for the purposes of former Article 26 of the Convention, remedies available in northern Cyprus were to be regarded as “domestic remedies” of the respondent State and that the question of their effectiveness had to be considered in the specific circumstances where it arose. 89. The Court notes that the Commission avoided making general statements on the validity of the acts of the “TRNC” authorities from the standpoint of international law and confined its considerations to the Convention-specific issue of the application of the exhaustion requirement contained in former Article 26 of the Convention in the context of the “constitutional” and “legal” system established within the “TRNC”. The Court endorses this approach. It recalls in this connection that, although the Court in its Loizidou judgment (merits) refused to attribute legal validity to such provisions as “Article 159 of the TRNC Constitution”, it did so with respect to the Convention (p. 2231, § 44). This conclusion was all the more compelling since the Article in question purported to vest in the “TRNC” authorities, irreversibly and without payment of any compensation, the applicant's rights to her land in northern Cyprus. Indeed, the Court in its judgment did not “consider it desirable, let alone necessary, in the present context to elaborate a general theory concerning the lawfulness of legislative and administrative acts of the 'TRNC'” (ibid., p. 2231, § 45). 90. In the Court's opinion, and without in any way putting in doubt either the view adopted by the international community regarding the establishment of the “TRNC” (see paragraph 14 above) or the fact that the government of the Republic of Cyprus remains the sole legitimate government of Cyprus (see paragraph 61 above), it cannot be excluded that former Article 26 of the Convention requires that remedies made available to individuals generally in northern Cyprus to enable them to secure redress for violations of their Convention rights have to be tested. The Court, like the Commission, would characterise the developments which have occurred in northern Cyprus since 1974 in terms of the exercise of de facto authority by the “TRNC”. As it observed in its Loizidou judgment (merits) with reference to the Advisory Opinion of the International Court of Justice in the Namibia case, international law recognises the legitimacy of certain legal arrangements and transactions in situations such as the one obtaining in the “TRNC”, for instance as regards the registration of births, deaths, and marriages, “the effects of which can only be ignored to the detriment of the inhabitants of the [t]erritory” (loc. cit., p. 2231, § 45).