The Crescent of the Sultan

The wedding banquet in Constantiniya lasted for seven days, and these seven days were not just about eating.

If the representative political activity on the first day is the meeting between the bosses, they will decide how to deal with the issues of the Arabian Peninsula and the Great Expedition.

The second and third days were dedicated to promoting conversion. First, the impact of Anna's conversion as the daughter of the Orthodox Patriarch was further amplified to attract Orthodox Christians to convert.

The second is to use the influence of Topkapi Palace and the High Gate to draw away male Muslim elders and ulema from each family, creating more time for female Muslims to spend time with female Orthodox Christians, so as to widen the cracks in conservative Islam. .

The fourth and fifth days are the investiture ceremonies. For example, Suleiman was awarded the title of Royal Stable Master on this day.

The sixth and seventh days were to promote the new law, which was also the most troublesome part for Selim. The reason why no new law was given when the "Imperial Edict" was promulgated in January was because he was afraid of religious forces.

This cannot be solved by simply copying homework, because the Ottoman Empire is the Ottoman Empire and Türkiye is Turkey.

Two regimes with different national conditions cannot be copied no matter how they work.

Although Turkey was a Muslim country in later generations, its legal system and system were completely different from other Muslim countries due to its geographical location and early absorption of advanced Western legal systems.

The Emperor even dared to say that the Turkish legal system was unique in the world.

The reason why it is unique is that its history, religion, and culture are somewhere between tradition and modernity.

The advancement and applicability of the legal system must be coordinated with a country's politics, economy, and culture.

The differences of the Turkish legal system are reflected in these parts.

Take Türkiye's unremitting efforts to join a European organization as an example.

During this period, the conflicts between religion, morality, culture, and law and the European way of life were clearly felt, and these conflicts were more noticeable than before.

The intersection and conflict of Eastern and Western cultures are reflected in every aspect of Türkiye.

Regardless of politics, economy, history, culture and law, they all confirm this.

Turkey is not only located in Europe and Asia, but also has been continuously impacted and integrated by the cultures and religious ideas of various Chinese and Western ethnic groups during the thousands of years of Turkish migration from central Asia to the Eurasian continent.

Türkiye's current location and situation determine its particularity.

Although you cannot copy the homework directly, the legal model of Türkiye in later generations is still worth learning from.

The first thing to note is that Turkey is an Asian country located in Europe and Asia, with most of its territory in Asia Minor. Its land area is 780,000 square kilometers, and more than 90% of its population is Muslim.

In this context, Islamic principles play an absolutely important role in people's daily lives.

For them, Islamic teachings were not only a religious teaching but also a legal system a long time ago.

While the Turks accepted Islam, they also slowly accepted it as law over a history of nearly 400 years. Here we have to mention the Ottoman Empire, where Emperor Cypriot is now located.

As an Islamic country, the Ottoman Empire adopted Islam as its state religion and applied Islamic law in a wide area.

Starting from the mid-9th century, as Turkey entered the Arab Islamic world and began to settle, it became inevitable to accept Islamic law.

The six-hundred-year-old legacy cannot be erased by Kemal. The fact that Egypt and Sudan have been able to sit firmly on the Diaoyutai today is the best reflection of the influence of religion on the Turks, and this is precisely the legacy of the Ottoman Empire.

Before traveling through time, Emperor Cyril would also laugh at the fact that Turkey likes to recognize wild fathers. After all, there are more than a dozen fathers at the beginning. It is just like announcing the name of a dish. It makes me want to laugh when I look at it.

Perhaps other fathers can be said to be indeed wild fathers, but the Ottoman Empire treats Turkey differently.

In modern times, the Balkan nations, or all the nations that were originally under the rule of the Ottoman Empire and finally became independent, are actually new products.

Regardless of whether the nation existed before the conquest, its national identity was severely damaged during the long reign of the Ottoman Empire.

The independence process of almost all the nations under the Ottoman Empire can be seen as a process of national reconstruction.

The most special among them are the Turks. They say they are independent, but they don't seem to want to forget their inheritance.

This was because their ties to the Ottoman Empire were deeper than all other nations.

This is also reflected in the law.

Before Kemal established the Republic of Turkey in Anatolia, the legal and administrative structure of the Ottoman Empire had a subtle influence on the roots of Turkish law today.

Therefore, the legal structure of the Ottoman period is the most important model for Turkish legal practitioners today.

The laws of the land, which until the end of the Ottoman period were almost exclusively Islamic in character, changed little over the course of more than six hundred years.

It can be said that for the Ottoman Empire, Persian and Gutujue (to avoid trouble, understand everything) were their living languages ​​in bureaucratic politics, but Arabic was their legal trial language.

The source of Islamic law is the Quran, which regulates all aspects of people's lives. All laws at that time were regulated in accordance with the Qur'an and Islamic codes.

The roots of Islamic law are composed of four parts: the Qur’an (kur’an), the Sünnet (Sünnet), words of praise to God (cma), and personal opinions and views (tihat).

Of these four components, the first two are indisputable.

Islamic law is divided into two types: administrative law and special law. Administrative law not only stipulates the patterns and norms of religious affairs, religious levels, and tax collection, but also includes criminal provisions within the scope of administrative law.

It provides for vengeance, injury, and punishments for adultery and beatings, for theft, robbery, conversion, rebellion, and rebellion; it also provides for judicial institutions, methods of trial, and proceedings.

The penalties for adultery and conversion of faith are very detailed and severe in this section. The special laws stipulate: free persons, slaves, family, inheritance, waqf, debts and distributions, ownership rights under Islamic law, etc.

Under the influence of Islamic law, compare the previous Islamic feudal dynasty - the Seljuk Dynasty.

It can be seen that the legal structure of the Ottoman Empire was only more detailed than the Seljuk legal system, but in principle it was the same.

This legal structure slowly disappeared from the founding of the country to hundreds of years of history, and its authority was only retained in the ruling center.

There were many internal and external reasons why the Ottoman Empire was on the road to demise.

Regarding internal reasons, Emperor Sai can boldly say: "Law is the most important factor."

By the 19th century, European powers had completely carved up the territories of Asia and Africa, and they immediately sought out empires that seemed powerful.

In the west, this country was the Ottoman Empire, and in the east, this country was the Qing Dynasty.

Driven by the wave of European colonization, large-scale industry emerged and the world market began to take shape. In this way, the process of globalization began, and the first wave of benefits for the Ottoman Empire, which was close to Europe, was not a technological upgrade, but a conflict of ideas.

Against the background of this situation, Western law has had a significant impact on the development of law in Islamic countries, especially Islamic law.

With the establishment and consolidation of the European colonial system, the influence of the Western legal system through unequal treaties such as extraterritorial jurisdiction has become increasingly strong, which has severely impacted traditional Islamic law.

In a situation of internal and external difficulties, after the reform of the ruler Selim III, the original owner of the body of Emperor Sai, who wanted to end this hopeless situation, failed.

After witnessing the decline of the empire and the decline of the Sultan's authority, Mahmud II also took this brave step and worked hard to reform and update the country's legal structure.

Starting from the end of the 18th century, the Ottoman Empire was forced to carry out some important reforms. It was at this time that western influence gradually entered Turkey.

After 1839, Turkish law became more open to the West.

At this point, the Turkish legal system has also entered a situation where Turkish law is an integral part of Western law. (a bit difficult to pronounce)

In terms of legal reform, the most prosperous period was the Tanzima founded by Mahmud II's son Abdullah Meguid I and the then Grand Vizier Mustafa Rashid Pasha. Special reform.

During this period, the main object of the Ottoman Empire's imitation was French law. The High Gate promulgated the "Commercial Law", "Criminal Law", "Maritime Law", and in 1876 promulgated the first "Constitution" in the history of the empire.

But this has caused a problem, that is, the conflict between Sharia and national law.

Since 1840, Islamic law and Western secular law coexisted in the Ottoman Empire, and there was a dual judicial system, namely the Shari'a court and the secular court dominated by the ulema.

With the further deterioration of the situation and the further need for reform, the authority of the former has gradually shrunk, and the latter has gradually taken over the dominant position.

While introducing Western law, the Ottoman Empire also codified traditional Islamic law rules in the form of Western national codes. The product was the Mayala, a compilation of civil laws.

This compilation of laws was the first government attempt in the history of Islamic law to codify and promulgate the rules of Islamic law.

It is also the government’s initial attempt to systematize, clarify and modernize traditional laws through codification.

This method of legal modernization had a lasting impact on later generations. The modernization of traditional marriage and family inheritance laws in Islamic countries in the Middle East has always adopted this method.

Türkiye is an Islamic country at the forefront of the transition to modern Western democratic politics in the Middle East.

After the founding of the country, Turkey, under the leadership of Kemal, abolished the caliphate system that had been in place for more than 1,200 years and established a policy of separation of church and state.

And it has promulgated the Civil Law, Civil Procedure Law, Criminal Law, Maritime Law, etc.

However, before this series of policies were introduced, it was Kemal's prestige accumulated in the Battle of Garibaldi that provided the guarantee.

After Kemal drove away the invaders from Istanbul on March 16, 1920, he established the Grand National Assembly in Ankara on April 23, 1920. The first decision he made was that Istanbul was not suitable to be a governor. land, which declares the death of one government and the establishment of a new one.

In 1921, with the first constitution of the Republic: the principle of "a non-aligned country under sovereignty" was established. According to this principle, the political and administrative rules that have been applied in sovereignty have been adopted for thousands of years. and routines underwent a major transformation.

In 1923, before the founding of the Republic, a series of law revision committees were established for the purpose of reforming previously effective laws: civil law, procedural law, trade law, trial procedure, and criminal law revision committees.

The key here is that the Civil Code Revision Committee was divided into two parts.

The first part focuses on family law. In their revised draft, religious legal theories for individuals and families are stipulated regardless of whether they are Muslims or not.

The second part provides for other legal systems and trial rights.

This draft takes the needs of the country as the main line and establishes a new, modern legal system.

This was a completely new law influenced by, rather than framed by, the laws of the Ottoman Empire.

When the Draft Civil Code was completed, the adoption of the new Civil Code was announced on November 5, 1925 by the President of the Republic, Mustafa Kemal.

In this way, everyone is equal - this goal that people have pursued for a long time has been realized. From then on, the history of the implementation of the principle of equality between men and women regardless of gender, ethnicity, or religion among Turkish citizens began.

After the transfer of the Civil Code and the Law of Obligations from Swiss Law, the transfer of other basic laws also began.

Laws related to Western European countries were translated one by one and came into effect.

The theory of the legal system of the Republic of Turkey has also entered the category of the civil law system. In this way, from the Ottoman period to the present, a legal system that is "closely connected with the needs of the times" or "together with modern law, is the most modern legal system" in Turkish legal work Thanks to the efforts of the researchers, it was realized in just 3 years.

At that time, Turkey faced serious threats after the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire. This was not comparable to today's Sudan, which dares to vaguely promote the so-called Great Ottomanism.

At that time, Turkey was threatened by the Balkan countries externally, and was shaken by the old forces of the Ottoman Empire internally. There was also a serious tendency of ethnic separatism in the country.

Therefore, Turkish legal professionals at that time treated the contradictions between old laws and Western laws with radical views and a reforming attitude.

It is not difficult to see from the above that Türkiye’s legal system is the civil law system.

However, in the history of Turkey, such countries have long adhered to Islamic law, but in the modern reforms they have completely abandoned Islamic law and replaced it with Western law.

Although the legal systems of these countries have introduced modern Western laws, most Muslims in the country still identify with the traditional legal culture. This has led to conflicts between the legal system and legal culture and has become a huge resistance to legal modernization.

At that time, due to domestic and foreign pressure, and because the leader was Kemal, the Turks were naturally able to accept it.

But the situation faced by Emperor Cyprus was not like this. He was not Kemal, and the environment the Ottoman Empire was in was not that of later Turkey. It was impossible for him to promote such a big change.

What is the legal advocacy this time?

Of course, it is not the so-called modernization of the law, but some changes made on the basis of the law based on Shariah as the framework. He obtained the Grand Mufti's permission because the other party also felt that changes were needed.

But whether it can be recognized by ordinary Muslims is not certain. This is why Emperor Sai held the wedding banquet for seven days to provide a place to preach the law. Otherwise, Emperor Sai would really have a lot of money.

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