Atatürk’s civil law revolution

With the proclamation of the Republic, one of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk’s most significant revolutions took place in the field of law. With the adoption of the Swiss Civil Code by the parliament on February 17, 1926, the Republic of Turkey abandoned the primitive, religion-based Ottoman legal system and acquired laws that were truly on par with those of its contemporaries.

The first reforms aimed at establishing a modern legal system in the Ottoman Empire were introduced with the 1838 Edict of Tanzimat. Although the Tanzimat reforms played a crucial role in the process leading to the Republic, because the Ottoman Empire was a religious state, the legal regulations of the Tanzimat era were implemented only to the extent permitted by the Islamic religion. Like Atatürk’s reforms, the Tanzimat reforms were aimed at ensuring equal rights for citizens. However, this goal could not be fully achieved during the Ottoman period. The changes made were always limited by the aspiration to reach a goal, and the targeted result was never attained. The Tanzimat reformers and the Second Constitutional Era reformers who came to power later did not deny this reality, accepting their own periods as an “interim period.”

Atatürk had learned the necessary lessons from past experiences and, by exercising his will during his own era, did not allow reforms to remain unfinished.

Immediately after the proclamation of the Republic, work began on drafting a new family law, and religious laws that did not belong to the modern world, such as polygamy, were sought to be purged from the legal system. The draft was debated in parliament from 1923 to mid-1924 and was ultimately rejected. In 1924, the family law was still designed according to Islamic jurisprudence. A man could marry four women, and the issue of polygamy was the primary reason the family law failed to pass through parliament.

Like the reformers before him, Atatürk faced social resistance. Had he settled for the parliament’s decision, the Republic of Turkey, as in the Tanzimat and Second Constitutional periods, would not have been able to reach the level of civilized nations in the 1920s, and the reforms would have remained at a “stagnant” level, just as they had during the Ottoman era. However, at this point, Atatürk acted decisively and took control. In a speech he delivered in parliament on March 1, 1924, he stated that if laws and statutes are incompatible with the conditions of the age they are meant to serve, the traditional must be discarded, adding that a path followed by adherence to centuries-old beliefs is “the most dire obstacle in the way of the awakening of nations.”

Under Atatürk’s guidance, a new civil code began to be drafted, and after two years of work, the Swiss Civil Code was adopted by the parliament on February 17, 1926.

The Swiss Civil Code had been in effect in Switzerland since 1912. Considered a successful synthesis of Roman law and the philosophy of natural rights, it was accepted by many societies as the most modern example of civil law of its time. It was officially adopted by other countries both before and after Turkey.

With the adoption of the Swiss Civil Code, equality between men and women, the requirement for official marriage, monogamy, the right of women to enter any profession they choose without anyone’s approval, and equality between men and women in legal matters such as testimony in court, inheritance, and divorce were officially recognized by the state. The authority of religious figures, including patriarchates, over the administration of law and justice was stripped away. Sharia courts were abolished, and legal affairs were left entirely in the hands of professionals. Religious rules were pushed outside the relationships between citizens—whether Muslim or non-Muslim—and their relations with the state in the eyes of the law.

The reform in law was the complement to the abolition of the sultanate and the caliphate, and the process of transitioning to constitutional governance that took place in 1908. Had the Swiss Civil Code not been adopted, the Ottoman Empire’s archaic laws would have remained in force, and the abolition of the sultanate and caliphate would have had little technical meaning. With the civil law reform, the most significant obstacle to Turkey’s modernization was removed.

The difference between Atatürk and the reformers before him was that he never compromised his ideals and, regardless of the consequences, implemented the necessary reforms completely. Legal reform was perhaps the revolution where Atatürk faced the fiercest resistance. However, unlike previous reformers, Atatürk was not a leader who would accept any reform in a half-hearted manner. With his determined stance, he pushed the civil code through parliament in its entirety, and thanks to this, Turkey—except for its first three years—did not experience an “interim period” in terms of law. The Swiss Civil Code, which was put into effect in 1926, still maintains its validity today, with the exception of minor updates and a general update that took place between 2001 and 2002.