Information Note on the Court’s case-law No. 117
March 2009
İrfan Temel and Others v. Turkey - 36458/02
Judgment 3.3.2009 [Section II]
Article 2 of Protocol No. 1
Right to education
Temporary suspension of students for having petitioned university authorities to provide optional Kurdish language courses: violation
Facts: The applicants were university students. In January 2002 they petitioned the university requesting that optional Kurdish language classes be introduced. As a result, all but one of them were suspended from the university for a period of two terms; the remaining student, who had shown remorse, was suspended for one term. They made an unsuccessful request for a stay of execution of the disciplinary decisions against them. Their requests for annulment were also initially rejected by the courts, on the grounds that the petitions had been likely to give rise to polarisation on the basis of language, race, religion or denomination, and that they represented part of the new strategy of civil disobedience by the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK, an illegal armed organisation). However, the Supreme Administrative Court quashed the lower courts’ decisions and remitted the cases for fresh examination to the first-instance court. In May 2004 the competent court annulled the disciplinary sanctions against the applicants, finding that their petitions for optional Kurdish language classes were fully in line with the general aim of Turkish higher education, which was to train students in becoming objective and broad-minded citizens who were respectful of human rights.
Law: The applicants’ suspension from the university had constituted a restriction on their right to education. The central issue was the question of proportionality. The applicants had not committed any reprehensible act, nor had they resorted to violence or attempted to breach the peace or order in the university. They had been sanctioned merely for submitting petitions and because of the views expressed therein. However, neither their views, nor the form in which they had been conveyed, could be construed as an activity which would lead to polarisation of the university population on the basis of language, race, religion or denomination. Even though the right to education did not, in principle, exclude recourse to disciplinary measures, including suspension or expulsion from an educational institution in order to ensure compliance with its internal rules, such regulations should not injure the substance of the right nor conflict with other rights enshrined in the Convention or its Protocols. In the instant case the applicants had been suspended from the university as a result of the exercise of their freedom of expression. The imposition of such a disciplinary sanction could not be considered as reasonable or proportionate. Although the sanction had been subsequently annulled on grounds of unlawfulness, the Court found it regrettable that by that time the applicants had already missed one or two terms of their studies and the outcome of the domestic proceedings had failed to redress their grievances under this head.
Conclusion: violation (unanimously).
Article 41 – EUR 1,500 in respect of non-pecuniary damage to each applicant.
© Council of Europe/European Court of Human Rights
This summary by the Registry does not bind the Court.
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