Turkey · Overview
The legal system of Turkey
A civil-law system built by deliberate wholesale reception rather than gradual evolution. In the 1920s the young republic adopted the Swiss Civil Code and Code of Obligations, the Italian Penal Code and the German Commercial Code in translation, displacing Ottoman Islamic law and the Mecelle almost entirely. Those foundations were replaced by modern Turkish recodifications — a new Civil Code in 2001, a new Penal Code in 2004 and a new Commercial Code in 2011 — but the Swiss and German methodological inheritance is still visible in doctrine and drafting. Turkey is a party to the European Convention on Human Rights and individual application to the Constitutional Court has been available since 2012.
Legal tradition
Turkey belongs to the civil law tradition. A civil-law system built by deliberate wholesale reception rather than gradual evolution. In the 1920s the young republic adopted the Swiss Civil Code and Code of Obligations, the Italian Penal Code and the German Commercial Code in translation, displacing Ottoman Islamic law and the Mecelle almost entirely. Those foundations were replaced by modern Turkish recodifications — a new Civil Code in 2001, a new Penal Code in 2004 and a new Commercial Code in 2011 — but the Swiss and German methodological inheritance is still visible in doctrine and drafting. Turkey is a party to the European Convention on Human Rights and individual application to the Constitutional Court has been available since 2012.
How power is divided
Unitary. 81 provinces administered by centrally appointed governors, alongside elected metropolitan and district municipalities with their own mayors and councils. Local government has genuine budgetary weight in the large cities but no legislative competence.
Where law comes from
- The 1982 Constitution
- Articles 1–3 are unamendable; international human rights treaties prevail over conflicting statutes under Article 90.
- Statutes of the Grand National Assembly
- The primary legislative instrument.
- Presidential decrees
- Introduced in 2018; void where the subject is reserved to statute or already regulated by law.
- The Civil Code 2001, Penal Code 2004, Commercial Code 2011
- The core recodifications.
- Court of Cassation unification-of-precedent decisions
- Binding on lower courts to resolve conflicting case law.
The legal profession
A single profession of avukat, admitted after a four-year law faculty degree and a one-year traineeship, with compulsory membership of a provincial bar association under the Union of Turkish Bar Associations. Representation by counsel is mandatory for companies in most litigation. Judges and prosecutors form a separate career entered by examination and the Justice Academy, and notaries hold a licensed monopoly over authenticated instruments — property transfers require both notarial and land registry formality.
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