STRASBOURG, 30 June 2004 — Europe’s top human rights court yesterday rejected a Turkish woman’s case against Istanbul University which threw her out for wearing a headscarf, in a ruling upholding secularism as a basic guarantee of democracy.

The European Court of Human Rights said the university had not violated the rights of Leyla Sahin, a medical student blocked from sitting exams in 1998 and later refused permission to enroll in the faculty.

The university’s ban on wearing headscarves was “based on two principles — secularism and equality” in mainly Muslim but strictly secular Turkey where the defense of a secular state is enshrined in its constitution, a court statement said.

Therefore “upholding that principle could be regarded as necessary for the protection of the democratic system in Turkey,” it said.

The judgment was the first time the Strasbourg-based court has ruled on the headscarf issue and could set a legal precedent in a topic that has cropped up elsewhere in Europe, notably in France which this year banned the wearing of headscarves and other religious insignia in schools after several explosive cases in a country with some five million Muslims.

Records from the European Court of Human Rights show 213 other complaints similar to Sahin’s case have been filed here against Turkey, whose Islamic heritage has been an issue — along with the pace of its democratic overhaul — in its bid to join the European Union.

The court statement did not specifically mention the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, a party whose Islamic roots raised concern when it swept to power in 2002.

But the court stressed that “religious symbols had taken on political significance in Turkey in recent years”, and said its ruling “did not lose sight of the fact that there were extremist political movements in Turkey which sought to impose on society as a whole their religious symbols and conception of a society founded on religious precepts.”

German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, whose country has a huge Turkish minority, again made a strong pitch at the NATO Summit in Istanbul yesterday backing Turkey’s bid to join the EU. But not all EU leaders are certain the bloc can absorb such a vast and relatively poor country of 70 million.