ANKARA, Turkey — A European human rights court has condemned Turkey for requiring citizens to specify their religious status on national identity cards.
“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 in a ruling issued Feb. 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 the court in Strasbourg, France, in 2005 by Sinan Isik, a 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 apart from Islam, which is nominally professed by most of the country’s 77 million inhabitants.
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