ABSTRACT
Marking out the road he believed Turkey had to follow, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk declared: "The Ottoman Empire began to decline the day when, proud of her successes against the West, she cut the ties that bound her to the European nations." To understand and evaluate the scope of the social revolution that Ataturk's ideas spurred in Turkey, one must study it in the perspective of Turkish social and legal history. Military defeats soon drove home the necessity of further reforms. When the once victorious Turkish armies began to sustain serious reverses, the ground was prepared for the Tanzimat of 1839. The first Turkish constitution was promulgated in 1876 and repromulgated in 1908. Ataturk believed that only a constitution based on democracy, human rights, and liberty for all could insure the survival of the Turkish Republic. The Turkish code also accords a more limited right of inheritance to the surviving spouse than does Swiss law.
