Law of Turkey

Turkey has a civil law system built almost entirely on European continental codes, adopted as part of the sweeping secularizing reforms that followed the founding of the Republic of Turkey in 1923 under Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. The Ottoman era's mixed religious and customary legal framework was replaced within a few years: Turkey adopted the Swiss Civil Code in 1926, later revised in 2001, modeled its criminal code on Italy's Zanardelli penal code, and drew on German influenced commercial and procedural codes, producing a thoroughly continental legal order in which legislation, not judicial precedent, is the primary source of law. The 1982 Constitution sets out the structure of government and the catalogue of rights, and a Constitutional Court exercises judicial review over legislation. Turkey's long-standing customs union and accession relationship with the European Union has also driven substantial harmonization of Turkish law, particularly in commercial and regulatory areas, with European Union legal standards.