The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) ruled Tuesday that Turkey violated the rights of two academics by canceling their passports under a state of emergency decree issued after a coup attempt in 2016, marking the latest in a series of judgments against Ankara over sweeping restrictions imposed on civil servants and academics.
The court found that Turkey breached the right to respect for private life under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and the right to education under Article 2 of Protocol No. 1. Canceling the academics’ passports interfered with their private lives, the judges said, since the convention protects personal freedoms such as family life and the ability to travel. Blocking them from enrolling in doctoral studies abroad also amounted to a violation of their right to education. The court ordered the Turkish government to pay each applicant €2,600 ($2,800) in non-pecuniary damages and €1,000 ($1,050) in costs and expenses.
The case was brought by Ali Deniz Gür and Yasin Bedir, both signatories of the “Academics for Peace” petition, which in 2016 called for an end to military operations in Turkey’s Kurdish-majority southeast. The petition, signed by more than 2,000 academics, triggered a backlash from the government, which accused its supporters of spreading “terrorist propaganda.”
Following the coup attempt in July 2016, Turkey declared a state of emergency and dismissed tens of thousands of academics, judges, teachers and other civil servants by emergency decrees. Gür and Bedir were fired from their universities under Decree No. 689, which also led to the cancellation of their passports. Both had been accepted into doctoral programs abroad but were unable to take up their studies because they were barred from traveling.
In its ruling, the court referenced its earlier Telek and Others v. Turkey judgment, where it concluded that emergency decrees failed to provide sufficient safeguards against arbitrariness. It said the passport cancellations did not meet the requirement of legality and exceeded what was strictly necessary under the state of emergency.
Human rights lawyer Ufuk Yeşil welcomed the decision, writing on social media that it was part of a growing series of rulings against Turkey over passport restrictions. Rights groups have long argued that such measures effectively punished dismissed academics twice — by stripping them of both their livelihoods and their ability to seek opportunities abroad.
The Strasbourg-based court has repeatedly ruled against Turkey over emergency decree measures, including mass dismissals and restrictions on freedom of expression. Ankara has defended the decrees as necessary to protect national security during a period it described as an existential threat, but the court has said the measures often lacked individual justification and disproportionately restricted fundamental rights.
The Turkish government has not yet commented on the ruling.
