Excluding Fiqh from Turkish History: A Quest for Legal Legitimacy through the History of Law Courses in the Early Turkish Republic (1925-1932)

Authors : Tuğrul Kütükcü

Pages : 767-808

Doi:10.33227/auifd.1720192

View : 275 | Download : 422

Publication Date : 2025-11-30

Article Type : Research Paper

Abstract :This study explores the deliberate exclusion of fiqh from history of law and Turkish legal history courses during the early Turkish Republic (1925–1932), a pivotal period marked by the sweeping legal reforms of the Kemalist regime. It examines how these courses, taught at Ankara Law School and Dār al-Funūn Faculty of Law, were wielded as ideological instruments to forge a secular-nationalist Turkish identity and legitimize the adoption of Western legal frameworks. Through a meticulous analysis of the lecture notes from four influential legal historians—Sadri Maksudi Arsal, Şevket Memedali Bilgişin, Yusuf Ziya Özer, and Ahmet Ağaoğlu—the research uncovers a unified narrative that extolled pre-Islamic Turkish law as advanced and supreme, and secular Western law as the pinnacle of civilization, while simultaneously portraying fiqh as an alien, rigid, and underdeveloped system that impeded Turkish progress and thus justified its exclusion from the legal sphere. The study further reveals the legal historians’ use of anachronistic and Orientalist tropes, paradoxically rejecting Western racial biases about Turkish history while echoing derogatory views of Islam and fiqh. The findings highlight the tension between secular governance and religious tradition, offering insights into the role of historiography in state-driven secularization. By illuminating this intersection of nationalism, secularism, and historiography, the research offers a nuanced understanding of how legal education was harnessed to anchor the Kemalist reforms, redefining Turkey’s historical and legal identity in the process of modernization.
Keywords : Milliyetçi Tarihyazımı, Fıkıh, Hukuk Tarihi, Türk Hukuk Tarihi, Erken Türkiye Cumhuriyeti.

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