This is neither new nor first. Turkey has a court tradition that spans, at this point, more than seven hundred years (excluding Eastern Roman law with Corpus Iuris Civilis, which if included would bring it to 2500, an unbroken chain from whence it came, Rome) - to the point that it customarily allowed every sub-nation of the Ottoman Empire to have their own court and apply their own laws. For example, if you were Christian, you would get Christian judges, a Muslim would get the Muslim court and a Jewish person would likewise. It worked well for a long time, and when it didn’t, the modern, current court system was put in place.
The general point here is that, no, Turkey is not, in fact, a banana republic, but ultimately a pretty normal enlightenment-ideas-based country which is dealing with a leader that tries to stretch everything it can find to give himself more unrestrained power. That should unfortunately be pretty familiar to people who live in the US at this point.
Modern Turkey is indeed built on sound "enlightenment-ideas-based". This doesn't mean it will continue to be so. The current regime works hard to change these principles.
The fact that these principles are challenged in democracies world over should bother us. This is not the same as it ever was, it's a real threat for the liberties and rights humanity managed to bootstrap for it's individuals.
We are watching the erosion of them in realtime. It's a slow process that's easy to miss or get used to. But, I believe we should be wary.
Do the "enlightenment-ideas" on which the modern Turkish nation is based include the necessity of ethnic cleansing of Christian and Greek-speaking populations in Asia Minor, that motivated the genocides of the Pontic and Anatolian Greeks, Assyrians and Armenians, overseen and instigated by the Young Turks? Or does it refer to the continued denial of Turkey that these took place, despite their recognition as acts of genocide by the international community?
It's a rhetoric question. There is nothing "enlightened" about modern Turkey: it is a de facto military dictatorship, belligerent and militaristic, that relishes its self-chosen role as the regional bully in the Eastern Mediterrannean and the Near East. It was like this before Erdogan (with Turgut Ozal) and it will be like this after Erdogan, and for a long time still.
But perhaps I'm just blinded by prejudice having lived most of my life in Greece, which is right next door to Turkey. Perhaps you -presumably not living so close to Turkey- may have a broader perspective that I am missing.
In that case, can you name one time in the last 45 years when Turky has actively promoted peace and stability in the regions it borders? (I'm leaving out 1974, the year of the invasion of Cyprus, to make it easier).
While we’re talking history: I’ve heard that the system of laws codified under Justinian in the Byzantine empire ended up forming the basis for most Western law systems to this day. My math is probably off here, but is the current Turkish court system a continuous descendant from that system?
That's why I left it separate under an asterisk. Not an expert, but I think what happened is that Emperor Justinian's code remained the base for the Christian law within the Empire until the modernisation, which was pretty much a merge of that tradition with updates pulled from French third republic with the exception of civil law, which was merged in from Switzerland instead.
Up until 1851 the largest minority in the Empire were Muslims at 45% of the population, followed by Christians at 35%. You could argue that it's an unbroken lineage because 35% of the population still followed Roman law which was still valid and in full force, or you could argue that the most populous minority didn't, therefore a broken lineage.
In either case, the reality is more shades of grey, of course: all jurisdictions of accepted law evolved side by side with some crosstalk over time. Ultimately though, Turkey terminated the application of muslim law, removed it entirely from its code and completely switched to a western code after World War I, roughly coincident with the collapse of the Empire and the foundation of the current, modern Republic.
It's subject to both European Court of Justice, and the European Court of Human Rights as the ultimate courts of appeal, both of which, I believe, have some presiding Turkish judges.
(My knowledge in this field is very superficial — if someone knows better, please feel free to correct!)
Not sure about the current Turkish system but the precursor to Turkey; the Ottoman Empire was a Islamic caliphate so they probably didn't adopt the same laws as Western system but it'd be still pretty accurate to say that the Byzantine empire formed some basis of Western laws (at least as a lineage of the Roman empire). Also as you probably know, Istanbul used to be called Constantinople.
It's not very clear actually because there were no rules regarding that. (AFAIK) We only have records for official Kadis(Regional Judges) and Divan-i Humayun (higher court). There are cases seen at kadi or divan-i humayun where one side is Muslim and the other side non-Muslim.
They are both institutions of the state and since the Ottoman Empire was an Islam state, they were obviously Islamic. But, Divan-i Humayun's decisions were "Sultan's Word" so they had to be fair. The usual/accepted route is to go Kadi first and then you can appeal to Divan-i Humayun. But it's seen im records that sometimes non-Muslims directly went to Divan-i Humayun because they believed that they wouldn't be treated fair at Kadi.
The judicial system of this empire was quite accommodative for an Islamic system. It had Islamic courts which were the primary courts and they formed the cornerstone of administration in the empire. But there were also other courts that were not based on Sharia law and were meant for the interpretation of the law as understood by non-Muslims who were part of the empire. They included Jews and Christians who had been welcomed to the empire and lived in groupings called millets. But the Jews and Christians had the freedom to take their cases to the Islamic courts if they wanted to and many did as a way of giving judicial credence to their cases, given the immense unofficial respect that was given to the Islamic courts. It should be noted that this recognition was informal and any decision from the other courts were equally respected in the empire.
The third type of courts was the trade/commercial/industrial or business courts. In these courts, disputes emanating from business within the empire were solved. The parties involved determined the inclination and sometimes, both Islamic law experts and Christian and Jewish judicial officers would sit side by side and decide a case. They were more concerned with securing justice and fairness and religion was never a key consideration. New laws into the three types of courts came from the top leadership as well as the judicial experts of the three courts.
> stretch everything it can find to give himself more unrestrained power. That should unfortunately be pretty familiar to people who live in the US at this point.
Is this level of trolling even considered trying? Trump has done very little to expand the powers of the US presidency.
