An Overview of Turkey S Modern Legal System

¶ … Turkish Legal System

Standing at the crossroads between Asia and Europe, Turkey is currently a strategically important member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization as well as an associate member and candidate country for full European Union membership (Turkey government, 2016). With a history that dates to antiquity, though, Turkey has experienced numerous foreign invasions over the centuries and, not surprisingly, these numerous foreign influences have also had an effect on the country's legal system. To determine this effect with some precision, this paper reviews the relevant literature to provide a description of the history of the Turkish legal system and its current state. Finally, a summary of the research and important findings about Turkey's legal system are provided in the conclusion.

Review and Discussion

At the turn of the 14th century, Turkey was comprised of semi-autonomous hereditary patriarchal tribes and legal decisions were the responsibility of tribal councils (Fischer, 1999). Although headed by titular tribal chiefs, these early Turks enjoyed a rough form of representative democracy. For instance, Fischer reports that, "Supreme power rested with the assembly of the whole tribe but day-to-day justice was dispensed by a council of elders" (1999, p. 281). This legal system was required because the nascent national Turkish legal system was inadequate for adjudicating matters in the far-flung regions of the country. In this regard, Fischer adds that, "Since the inefficient Turkish legal system provided no protection of any sort, and since tribes had common land, pastures, forest, and water rights, these councils were responsible for administrating civil, criminal and family law and were required to impose both legal and moral sanctions" (1999, p. 281).

By the mid-19th century, the Turkish legal system was largely modeled on Islamic shari'a law (Hanilogu, 2011). By the early 1920s, however, the country was consolidated under the leadership of Mustafa Kemal who later took the name "Ataturk" ("Father of the Turks") who implemented sweeping reforms to modernize and secularize the country's legal, political, economic and social systems (Turkey, 2016). For example, Hanilogu (2011) reports that, "In 1924, the Shar?'a Courts were abolished, and the legal [system] that had prevailed especially since 1864 came to an end" (p. 157). In addition, Turkey adopted a modified version of the 1912 Swiss Civil Code and the 1881 Swiss Code of Obligations in 1926 which completed the secularization of the Turkish legal system (Hanilogu, 2011). In this regard, Hanilogu notes that, "By 1930, the entire legal system had been stripped of any religious references and resembled that of secular Western European countries" (2011, p. 157).

Over the course of the next half century, though, Turkey would experience numerous political upheavals and relatively bloodless military coups that further highlighted the inefficiencies of the country's legal system in responding to the political and social changes that were taking place, and martial law has been used on a number of occasions to enforce social stability (Marcus, 2007). Despite periodically resorting to martial law during the middle of the 20th century, Turkey has emerged from this turbulent period in its history to become a largely democratic, free-market economy (Turkey, 2016).

As a result, Turkey currently has a civil law system that is based on various European legal systems, most especially the Swiss civil code (Turkey government, 2016). The adoption of the Swiss civil code by Turkey is not without precedent despite the fact that there is no geographic or cultural proximity between the two countries and little in the way of shared history. For example, Basedow (2011) points out that, "Various countries have adopted foreign codes although there was little cultural proximity between them and the country of origin. Thus, the Turkish Republic took over the Swiss Code of Obligations while Japan, Russia, China and Korea took the German Civil Code as a model" (p. 54).

The structure of the Turkish legal system consists of the 17-member Constitutional Court or Anayasa Mahkemesi, the nation's highest court, a 15-division (with 15 criminal and 23 civil chambers) 390-member Supreme Court of Appeals, a Council of State (comprised of 15 divisions, one consultative and 14 judicial divisions each of which has a minimum of five members and a division head (Turkey, 2016). There is also a system of lower courts that include military courts, administrative, specialized and audit courts (Turkey, 2016). All judicial positions are appointed by the Grand National Assembly and/or the presidents of the respective republics from which candidates are nominated (Turkey, 2016).