Two Di fferent Approaches to the Restrictions on Religious Symbols and Clothing: Analysis of the Human Rights Committee s and the European Court of Human RightsCase Law in terms of StatesObligations under International Law

Abstract

Freedom to wear religious symbols or clothing, which is an importantcomponent of the freedom of religion and conscience, continues to be one ofthe permanent topics of the European human rights agenda. The discussionswhich were initially centered around the Islamic headscarf have, in recentyears, included other religious symbols like kippah, cross and Sikh turbanand finally expanded to the ban on the burqa and the face veil in publicspace. The European Court of Human Rights who didn t consider, in asignificant number of the cases, the restrictions on wearing religious symbols-especially in Turkey and France- as a violation of freedom of religion andleaved a wide margin of appreciation to the states in this regard, has been thetarget of criticism. However the United Nations Human Rights Committeehas adopted a different approach and found a violation of the said freedomconcerning similar and sometimes identical individual applications. Thisstudy aims to reveal the difference between the Court s and Commitee sapproaches by analysing relevant case law and tries to find an answer to thequestion of how the state obligations arising from human rights treatiesshould be interpreted faced with this situation