was enrolled into a PhD program in USA. I finished the courseworks, passed the comprehensive exam, submitted my proposal which was approved but because of some personal circumstances I had to exit the program. Now I am starting again somewhere in UK and I would like to work on the same topic and would like to use the same proposal, with a little bit of updating literature and ideas. However, the proposal was in Turnitin Database. Now would it be self plagiarized? This was neither published nor it did get any credit. They are all my original ideas and I am passionate about my topic. So back to the question, if I use the same proposal would it be called self-plagiarized?

I would broadly say yes. It is your proposal and your own work. It may be on Turnitin but you haven't published it and if you tell the university/supervisors it shouldn't be much of an issue. However, as eng77 says, if someone else at your old your university has started working on your old proposal it would be a bit awkward .

How could someone use my proposal? Isn't this absurd? It was under the guidence of two supervisors? None should have an access except themselves and the admin who ran the proposal through Turnitin? Can I request my previous university to exclude the proposal?

And thank you for your suggestion.

Thank you. Do you think it would be a good idea to write to them and exclude the proposal from their database?

Is rewriting the proposal, as is common in assignment submissions etc. not acceptable?