Legal Rules Regarding Private Insurance Contract Law in the Ottoman Empire and the Republic of Turkey
Osmanlı İmparatorluğu’nda ve Türkiye Cumhuriyeti’nde Sigorta Özel Hukuku’na İlişkin Kurallar
Samim ÜNAN
Insurance activities of today differ from the insurance activities of the Ottoman Empire era and the early years of the Republic of Turkey. In the Ottoman era, legal rules were drafted only in respect of marine insurances by way of adoption of the corresponding rules in the French Commercial Code. Following the establishment of the Turkish Republic, insurance law rules were enacted in the Turkish Commercial Codes dated 1926 and 1956. Currently the Code dated 2011 is in force. The paper briefly examines the development of insurance practices and legal rules related to insurance in Turkey.
Insurance Contract Law, Insurance Activities, Ottoman Empire, Turkish Republic, Marine Insurance.
Sigortacılık faaliyetleri hem Osmanlı İmparatorluğu döneminde hem de Türkiye Cumhuriyeti’nin ilk yıllarında, günümüzdeki modern sigortacılık faaliyetlerinden farklılık göstermekteydi. Osmanlı İmparatorluğu’nda ilk olarak Fransız Ticaret Kanunu kaynak alınarak denizcilik rizikolarına ilişkin sigortalar hakkında yasal bir düzenleme yapılmıştı. Türkiye Cumhuriyeti’nin kurulmasından sonraki yasal düzenlemeler ise önce 1926 ve ardından 1956 tarihli Türk Ticaret Kanunu’nda yer almakta idi. Günümüzde bu konuda yürürlükte olan düzenleme, 2011 tarihli Türk Ticaret Kanunu’dur. Bu çalışma kapsamında esas olarak Türkiye’de sigortacılığın ve sigorta hukukunun gelişiminin kısaca açıklanması amaçlanmıştır.
Sigorta Sözleşmeleri Hukuku, Sigortacılık Faaliyetleri, Osmanlı İmparatorluğu, Türkiye Cumhuriyeti, Deniz Sigortaları.
I. INTRODUCTION
The Ottoman Empire (which was at the beginning a small state founded in 1299 after the collapse of the Anatolian Seljuk Empire) was dominated by Turks who converted to Islam, thus the Islamic rules played an important role within the lands controlled by the Ottomans. Although it is stated by certain researchers that Islam is not against the insurance, this institution did not find an important place in countries where Muslims were dominant. This is attributed first to the Islamic theologists who expressed doubts as to the compatibility at least in some respects of the insurance with religious rules and interpretations. Another factor may have been that insurance has been developed in places where commercial activities are abundant and this is often not the case for Islamic Countries especially after the beginning of the Middle Ages. However as the Ottoman Empire counted at the same time Jewish and Christian minorities (whose members were engaged in commercial activities) insurances were taken out as part of the commercial life. Later, the need of protection against the very harmful consequences of fire that regularly destroyed entire districts (of wooden houses and buildings) augmented the insurance practice. In this work we will focus on the development of insurances in both the Ottoman Empire and the Republic of Turkey that followed the end of the Ottoman era from a legal point of view (as the author is a jurist specialised in the field of insurance law). At this point it will be useful to underline that sometimes compensatory mechanisms are regarded as “insurance”. For example: Laws of Hammurabi:
23. In event anyone shall be robbed, and the person committing the robbery shall escape, the party so deprived of his property shall make claim under oath, enumerating the property of which he has been robbed, whereupon the municipality or ( ) wherein said robbery was committed shall compensate him for his loss
Anatolian Seljuk Empire rule:
