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Kanun ve Aile: Law and Family in Turkey
| Article
# : |
14396 |
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Section : |
CULTURE
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| Issue
Date : |
6 / 1988 |
6,062 Words |
| Author
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Paul J. Magnarella
Paul J. Magnarella is professor of anthropology and Middle
Eastern Studies at the University of Florida. |
The Turkish Republic was established in 1923 on the crumbled foundations of the Ottoman Empire. During the Ottoman era, which lasted from the fifteenth century to World War I, Islam provided Ottoman Muslims a framework of meaning within which to interpret their past and present circumstances and the future directions of their lives. Embodying the ethical basis for thought and behavior in the private realm, Islam constituted the divinely sanctioned jurisprudential basis for law and government. The Ottoman sultan was also the caliph, simultaneously head of state and leader of the Sunni Muslims.
As part of a master plan to create a modern, progressive Turkish state, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, Turkey's founder and first president, made secularization one of his uncompromising principles. Considering Islam a source of the Ottoman decline, Ataturk launched a bold attempt to create a new national mentality by abolishing the Shari'a (Islamic law) and adopting European legal codes, which he regarded as the epitome of Western civilization.
Legal scholars generally maintain that law responds to existing morals, customs, and traditions; societal change precedes legal change. Ataturk was determined to reverse the equation. He wanted imported Western law to displace Turco-Islamic tradition and thus create a new moral basis for a Western, secular style of life. Did he succeed? In 1955 a group of Turkish and Western scholars addressed this question with respect to Turkey's adoption of Swiss family law and answered with a qualified no. This article reviews their assessment and reexamines the question in the light of more recent evidence.
The traditional
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