From millet members to citizens. The Civil Code of Turkey and the formation of the idea of citizenship in Turkey

Abstract

This paper depicts how the changes taking place in the Ottoman Empire in its last years and the establishment of the Republic of Turkey gave grounds to creation of the notion of the nation-state citizen. This category replaced the category of millet member meaning in those circumstances, the member of a given ethno-religious group. The millet members benefited from law attributed to a given millet and thus, in the field of private law, their rights depended mainly on their personal status. The Turkish codification of the civil law, based on the Swiss Civil Code (i.e. the ZGB) played important role in the process of creation of the category of citizen. The codification brought – in the field of private law – the idea of equality of legal capacity of entities. Consequently, it eliminated legal pluralism and the principle of legal personalism.