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The Impact of a Legal Revolution in Rural Turkey

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 July 2024

June Starr  and
Jonathan Pool
June Starr
Affiliation:
State University of New York at Stony Brook
Jonathan Pool
Affiliation:
State University of New York at Stony Brook
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Extract

This paper examines the impact of Turkey's radical introduction of Western law codes and secular courts by analyzing a portion (1950-67) of the docket of a rural district court, located in Bodrum, Turkey. We are particularly interested in whether a transplanted formal legal system can influence the countryside, and we ask: (1) To what extent are rural district law courts being used, and is this use increasing? (2) In what domains are rural courts used, and to what degree do these coincide with domains formerly covered by religious and/or customary law? (3) How is the use of the courts distributed between settling disputes (including disputes between the state and citizens) and processing routine, undisputed formalities, and is this distribution changing? (4) To what extent are women and other non-powerful groups (rural, poor, ethnic minorities) using the courts, and has this use changed over time? (5) To what extent is the government using the courts for social control purposes, and how does this use compare with non-governmental use of the courts? (6) How does the use of the courts relate to abrupt shifts in political power and ideology?

Type
Research Article
Information
Law & Society Review , Volume 8 , Issue 4 , Summer 1974 , pp. 533 - 560
Copyright
Copyright © The Law and Society Association, 1974.

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Footnotes

AUTHORS' NOTE: We are indebted to John Whiting and Bea Whiting for advice on coding, Michael Rowe for coding, NIMH for suporting through a predoctoral fellowship and grant, Starr's 16 months' fieldwork in Bodrum, Turkey (1967-68), and SUNY Research Foundation for Pool's 1972 and Starr's 1973 summer Faculty Research Fellowships. In addition, we are grateful to Marc Galanter, Laura Nader, Samuel Popkin, and Richard L. Abel for valuable comments on an earlier draft of this paper delivered at the 1972 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Washington, D.C.

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