Turkey’s top court ruled that compulsory religion classes violate freedom of religion, upholding the two past rulings of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) that criticized Ankara on the principle and content of compulsory religious education.

The Constitutional Court’s verdict last week follows a long legal battle by Huseyin El, who wanted to pull his daughter out of compulsory education classes more than a decade ago because their content was not in line with his religious and philosophical beliefs. The school principal insisted that Nazli Sirin El, a fourth grader at the time, should take the course because only Christian and Jewish citizens of Turkey could be exempted. Nazli Sirin El is neither. She and her father are Alevis, a branch of Islam whose believers worship in a cemevi, rather than a mosque, with men and women alongside one another. But El insisted that it mattered little whether he was an Alevi, Jewish or an atheist, challenging the concept of compulsory religious courses and his right to stop his child from attending them. 

“We argued that forcing a parent to reveal or document his faith is also a violation of Constitutional Article 24, which says no one can be forced to reveal religious beliefs and convictions,” his lawyer Esra Basbakkal told Al-Monitor.

The initial court in Ankara ruled in El’s favor 13 years ago, saying he had the right to pull his daughter out of the class based on domestic law, international conventions and a similar ruling by the Strasbourg-based ECHR. But the Education Ministry appealed the case to the Council of State, which reversed the decision. Finally, it landed on the desk of the Constitutional Court in 2014.