Civil Code of 1926

CIVIL CODE OF 1926

civil laws of the republic of turkey, a secular body of laws that covers all citizens—muslims and non-muslims.

Turkey's civil law was enacted in 1926; unlike the gradual evolution of European civil codes, the transition from the Ottoman Empire to the Republic of Turkey brought a new code that has undergone relatively few changes.

Prior to the foundation of the Turkish republic, from 1869 to 1926, Ottoman legislators promulgated private (civil) law—rules derived from the shariʿa (Islamic law), comprising 1,851 articles and called Mecelle-i Ahkam-i Adliye (Compilation of legal rules). It had no laws concerning family and inheritance matters. Near the end of World War I, in 1917, a decree on family law, Hukuku Aile Kararnamesi, was promulgated by the sultan. In 1919, the pressure of organized religious forces abrogated this decree.

The Ottomans had been allied with the losing Central Powers in World War I. With the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, the founders of the Turkish republic committed themselves to Western institutions; and they decided to undertake, in the shortest possible time, radical changes in Turkey's legal system. For Mustafa Kemal (Atatürk) and his colleagues, the major tools of social change were education and legal reform. An additional factor forced them to act swiftly: According to the peace of Lausanne (of 24 July 1923), the Kemalist government was pledged to adopt—under the supervision of the League of Nations—a legal statute protecting their non-Muslim minorities. Turkey obliged by introducing a general code and juridical system that would be acceptable to all citizens—Muslim and non-Muslim. The secularization of the legal system became one of Mustafa Kemal's major goals.

Kemalism used a number of Swiss and other European codes with relatively few amendments as models. In 1926, the Kemalists produced the new civil code, the code of obligation, and the trade code; in 1927, the code of civil procedure; in 1929, the sea trade code. With these steps they realized very quickly two of Mustafa Kemal's goals while depriving the conservative Islamic clergy and others of time to organize resistance: (1) the domestic scene was free of all remnants of the Ottoman-Islamic legal system, and (2) their international relations had been freed from the obligations of the treaty of Lausanne.

The Swiss civil code was used as a model because it is based on twenty-five-year community studies of existing norms and mores in Swiss cantons where French, German, Italian, and Romansh were spoken. The Swiss code seemed best to accommodate the needs of a country with diverse cultural and linguistic groups. Turkey's Minister of Justice Mahmut Esat Bozkurt had studied law in Switzerland, and Swiss law professor G. Sausser-Hall was engaged to act as legal counsel to the government of Turkey. On 17 February 1926 the modified version was adopted in a single session of the Turkish Grand National Assembly; it entered into force on 4 October 1926. Some attempts to modify the code began in 1951—concerning human rights, family law, adoption, and divorce. Although the acceptance of the code has not been universal, and Islamic law is used in some remote rural regions, the civil code has served Turkey well.

see also atatÜrk, mustafa kemal; kemalism; lausanne, treaty of (1923); ottoman empire; shariʿa; turkish grand national assembly.

Bibliography

Ansay, Turgul, and Wallace, Don, Jr. Introduction to Turkish Law. The Hague and Boston: Kluwer Law International, 1996.

Nermin Abadan-Unat