“This is in breach of the state’s duty of neutrality and impartiality, since it leads the State to make an assessment of the applicant’s faith,” the European Court of Human Rights said on February 2. “Freedom to manifest one’s religion or beliefs has a negative aspect — namely, an individual’s right not to be obliged to disclose his or her religion, or to act in a manner that might enable conclusions to be drawn as to whether he or she holds such beliefs.”
The case was taken to Strasbourg in 2005 by Sinan Isik, an Izmir-based member of Turkey’s Alevi community, after local courts refused to allow him to remove the “Muslim” tag from his national identity document.
The court said the practice violates the 1950 European Convention on Human
Rights, which upholds “freedom of conscience, thought and religion.”
The ruling noted that the Alevi community is “deeply rooted in Turkish society and history,” and widely regarded as a faith separate from Islam, which is nominally professed by most of the country’s 77 million inhabitants.
“The fact of having to apply to the authorities in writing for the deletion of religion in civil registers and IDs — and, similarly, the mere fact of having an identity card with the “religion” box left blank — obliges the individual to disclose, against his or her will, information concerning an aspect of his or her religion or most personal convictions,” the court said.
Human rights groups say religious identification clauses are regularly used to deny jobs to non-Muslims in Turkey, whose government, under Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has faced frequent criticism for failing to uphold the rights of religious minorities.
In October, the European Commission warned Turkey it must do more to uphold religious freedom before being allowed to join the European Union in 2015, Separately, the European Court had earlier accepted two separate suits by Orthodox and Protestant churches that Turkey had violated their rights by denying them property ownership and legal registration.
The Council of Europe’s Parliamentary Assembly called in a resolution on January 27 for better protection of religious rights, and urged Turkey to recognize the international status of the Istanbul-based Ecumenical Patriarch, Bartholomeos I, a key primate for Orthodox Christians.
Among other steps, the resolution urged Turkey to condemn acts of violence against religious minorities and prosecute those responsible, to pass a law allowing non-Muslim children to attend minority schools, and to press for a media code of ethics on respect for religious minorities.
