Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) for over a decade has been claiming that its era has marked a turning point in the country’s democratic advancement and, therefore, its religious freedoms. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan tirelessly argued that women with headscarves were denied a place in society before the AKP came to power, and that his rule has guaranteed those pious women breathing room without interfering with anyone’s lifestyle. With a Sept. 16 decision, however, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has provided yet another challenge to the government’s assertions about the country’s religious freedoms.

The court unanimously decided that Turkey violates people’s basic right to education by forcing pupils to attend compulsory religion and ethics classes while “still inadequately [being] equipped to ensure respect for parents’ convictions.” The principal applicants of the case are all from an Alevi background; they complained that their children were being taught religion with the Sunni understanding of Islam, treating “the Alevi faith as a tradition or culture and not as a belief system in its own right,” and therefore forcing these children to face conflicts between the religious instruction given by the school and by their parents.

The court found the parents’ complaint to be just and noted that Christian and Jewish pupils in Turkey were exempted from religion and ethics classes: “The court noted in this connection that almost all of the member states offered at least one route by which pupils could opt out of religious education classes, by providing for an exemption system or the option of studying an alternative subject, or by making attendance at religious studies classes entirely optional.”

Emphasizing that the government would look into the details of the court’s ruling before issuing its final word, Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu strongly objected to the court’s finding, saying, “Religion cannot be classified as a tool of oppression. … If proper religion is not taught, it produces unhealthy and incorrect religious information that leads to the radicalization seen in our neighboring countries. Just as I should know about Marxism despite the fact that I am not a Marxist, it is necessary for an atheist to have knowledge of religious culture."