A doctoral programme protected by the right to education in Telek and others v. Türkiye? More careful research required

On 21 March 2023, the European Court of Human Rights found that Türkiye had violated the right to respect for private life under Article 8 on the one hand, and the right to education under Article 2 of the First Protocol on the other. Türkiye had expelled Alphan Telek, Edgar Şar, and Zeynep Kıvılcım, the applicants, from their status as civil servants and revoked their passports under the emergency laws adopted after the attempted coup in 2016. These sanctions were imposed because the applicants had signed a petition condemning the violence used by the Turkish government during actions against the PKK, the Kurdistan Workers' Party. The latter measure was challenged by the petitioners before the Court in Strasbourg. In this blogpost, I argue that the Court’s reasoning that this measure limited Mr Telek’s and Mr Şar’s right to education and consequently, its decision to broaden the scope of Article 2 of the First Protocol to include doctoral programmes, is deficient.