Mansur Yalçin and others v. Turkey No. 21163/11, ECtHR (Second Section), 16 February 2015

The refusal of exemption from the religious education course represents a violation of the right of parents to raise their children in accordance with their religious beliefs.

Art. 2 Prot. No. 1 ECHR

Article 2 of the first additional Protocol to the ECHR protects the need for teaching in an objective, critical and pluralistic way, without any purpose of indoctrination. Pluralism, as a condition of democracy, does not exclude the legitimacy of religious teaching, in primary and secondary public schools, even if confessional oriented, provided that it is objective and pluralistic or that the possibility of exemption is granted. Therefore, the refusal by national school authorities to grant total exemption from a religious teaching which is not pluralistic, critical and objective, represents a violation of the right to education.