ABSTRACT
Most nation-building projects required the state's assertion of control over religious institutions, in order to 'nationalise' the only significant supralocal identity that was indeed inherited from the Ottoman period. Turkey is the only post-Ottoman country created mainly by the efforts of its own inhabitants rather than by the military and diplomatic pressure of Christian European powers. In the 1920s, the Republic of Turkey replaced Ottoman civil and criminal law with Swiss and Italian codes, and through the 1930s it amended the criminal code to match changes made by the fascist regime in Italy. Purges, coups, ineffective legal systems and other signs of turmoil in public affairs suggest the underlying problem for post-Ottoman states and rulers caused or exacerbated by the absence of any meaningful Ottoman legacy or heritage. Across the post-Ottoman region the state model was European, and the near universal adoption of constitutions patterned on European precedents merely confirms the source of political designs.
