ABSTRACT
Turkey’s legal system definitely is not a mix of civil law and common law. Neither is Turkey a mixed jurisdiction in the classic sense, nor does it have an overt mixed legal system. After the collapse of the Ottoman Empire in 1920, legal evolution in the Turkish Republic was instigated through a strong desire to become Western and contemporary, and even today, rapid law reforms are being made to fulfill the requirements of the European Union acquis communautaire in the hope of joining it. Legal evolution has occurred through a succession of imports from the civilian world rather than being homegrown and has relied on major translation work. In fact, the legal system of the Turkish Republic has the appearance of belonging to the civil tradition in toto with the ingredients borrowed from Switzerland, Germany, Italy, and France. Yet although the Turkish legal system is not a mixed one in the orthodox sense, it is mixed in two other significant and different senses.
