Turkey: European Court Delivers Landmark Religious Rights Ruling

In a landmark decision that highlights the tensions between Turkey's idiosyncratic secularism and its hopes of European integration, the European Court of Human Rights ruled in early October in favor of a Turkish parent seeking an exemption for his daughter from compulsory religious lessons at school.

Turkey's insistence that Eylem Zengin attend religious education classes, the ECHR ruled on October 9, was in breach of international conventions requiring the government "to respect the right of parents to ensure education in conformity with their own religious