Some Legal Problems Seen in Polygamist Families after the Acceptance of 1926 Civil Code (Rize Sample)

Abstract

The Turkish Civil Code, which entered into force in 1926, represents a great change in Turkish law history. Turkish civil code based on purely Shari'a law till that date has turned into a secular identity. This has created some contradictions between the social practices that were built around the old legal norms and the order in which the new law tried to build. Polygamy, which was legitimate under the old law, but which was prohibited in the new law, can be viewed as one of these contrasts. For example, what would happen to a family created by the union of one man with two or more women before 1926 was a major problem. For the sake of these and similar problems, after the adoption of the Civil Code, a law on the application of this law was issued and it was accepted that marriages made in the old way were just as valid. Thus, in the process of transition to the new law, the old polygamist family structure became grounded on a legitimate floor. However, the problems experienced in such families in daily life did not stop from passing on to the courts that applied the new law. This study intends to point out some of the legal problems seen in polygamy after the Turkish Civil Code, adopted in 1926, through the examples found in the court archive, which is an unused source in the history of law history. One aspect of the work is to be able to demonstrate the importance of court archives that can be used as a source in the writing of our social history of the near future.

Keywords

• Medenî Kanun
• Hukuk İnkılâbı
• Adliye Arşivleri
• Çokeşlilik
• Rize