Temel ve Diğerleri/Türkiye Davası

“Violation of the Right to Education with the Exercise of the Disciplinary Sanctions”, Case of İrfan Temel and Others v. Turkey (Application no. 36458/02)

Osman ERMUMCU

In the case of İrfan Temel and Others v. Turkey, the legal dispute is about the imposition of a disciplinary sanction to the applicants for having petitioned the university authorities to provide optional Kurdish language courses. As regards the principle of proportionality, the European Court of Human Rights observes that the applicants were subject to a disciplinary sanction for merely submitting petitions which conveyed their views on the need for and the necessity of Kurdish language education and requested that Kurdish language classes be introduced as an optional module, without committing any reprehensible act. For the Court, the applicants were sanctioned because of the views expressed in their petitions. The Court considers that the imposition of such a disciplinary sanction cannot be considered as reasonable or proportionate. Although, it notes that these sanctions were subsequently annulled by the administrative courts on grounds of unlawfulness, regrettably by that time the applicants had already missed one or two terms of their studies and, thus, the outcome of the domestic proceedings failed to redress the applicants’ grievances under this head. The Court holds that there has therefore been a violation of Article 2 of Protocol No. 1 to the European Convention on Human Rights.

I. DAVANIN KONUSU

Davacılar (onsekiz kişi), Afyon Kocatepe Üniversitesi öğrencisi olup, muhtelif tarihlerde üniversite yönetimine dilekçe vererek, “Kürtçenin seçmeli ders olarak okutulması” talebinde bulunmaları sebebiyle Disiplin Yönetmeliği’nin 9/d maddesi uyarınca iki yarıyıl okuldan uzaklaştırma cezası almışlardır.

Davacıların disiplin cezası almalarına sebep olan dilekçeler, münferit verilmekle birlikte birbirinin aynı olup aşağıdaki ifadeleri içermektedir:

“…Anayasanın eğitim ve öğretim hakkı başlıklı 42. maddesi Anayasa’da yapılan yeni değişiklikle birlikte değerlendirildiğinde, kişinin en iyi konuştuğu dilde, ana dilinde, öğrenimine ilişkin anayasal bir hak tanımakta olduğu düşünülmelidir…