Te most valuable legal workpiece of the revolutionary movement triggered bythe proclamation of the Turkish Republic is Turkish Civil Code no. 743, whichwas translated from Swiss Civil Code and entered into force on 4th October1926. Te Code constituted the basis of private law relationships and aspired tocreate a new modern society in parallel with the Continental European legal systems.It laid the foundations of a new law and a new society, with its first sevenarticles applicable in all fields of private law and other articles with regards to thelaw of persons, family, inheritance and property.Turkish Code of Obligations no. 818 entered into force at the same date with theTurkish Civil Code and revolutionized the law of obligations.Turkish Civil Code substantially attained that goal during the seventy six yearslasting from its entry into force until 1st January 2002. Turkish society substantiallyadjusted itself to the Code itself and new institutions introduced by theCode.Te linguistic method adopted in the Turkish Civil Code was quite pure at thetime it was written, however it aged over time so that new generations could notunderstand some of the provisions in the Code. Besides, some mistakes had beenmade during preparatory work when the Swiss Civil Code was being translatedfrom French. Most importantly, there has been very important developmentsin the field of Civil law both nationally and internationally. Some very importantmodifications were made in the codes of European nations, particularly inSwitzerland. Developments and modifications in the field of family law are theforemost among them. Turkish legislator was either ignorant to transplant those developments and modificationsinto the Turkish Civil Code or late to make some partial improvements.Te Constitutional Court sometimes compensated for the inconveniencesoriginating from those delays. Te Court annulled the provisions which wereinconsistent with modern developments on the basis of their unconstitutionality.Te most striking examples of annulled provisions are the ones relating to theheirship of non-marital children, the woman's duty to take the permission ofher husband before getting involved in a profession/occupation and the articlesviolating gender equality.Swiss legislator, on the other hand, was fast to respond to those developmentsand transplanted very important new institutions and rules into the Swiss CivilCode.Two options were put on table for the modification of Turkish Civil Code inparallel with those developments.First option was to transplant new institutions and rules into the existing TurkishCivil Code as it was the case in Switzerland; second option was to prepare a newCivil Code.Te second option was preferred over the first one and preparatory work on anew Civil Code was commenced in 1994. After the completion of the work inDraft Preparation Committees, which I was involved in, the draft law was sent tothe Turkish Grand National Assembly by the Council of Ministers.At those times, the government was ruled by a coalition bringing together threepolitical parties. Te political and social opinions of those political parties weredeeply divergent. Unfortunately, the divergency strongly manifested itself on thepreparatory work. Time and efforts were wasted with some fruitless discussionson family law and particularly on regimes of marital property, so that more importantinstitutions and regulations of the Code could not be analyzed morethoroughly.Te article discusses those negative situations.Consequently, the new Turkish Civil Code no. 4721 entered into force.Te new Turkish Civil Code revealed legislator's determination to follow moderninstitutions and rules and to maintain the soul of 4th October 1926, apart fromthe Code's general preamble and negative modifications in some of the provisions. Te new Turkish Civil Code comprises 1046 articles, whereas the old one comprised943 articles. However, despite the fact that Turkish Civil Code no. 4721is called "new", it retained the 943 articles of the old code with some partialmodifications as to expression, concept or substance. Te number of new articleswho were added was 103. Most of the new articles are in the field of maritalproperty regimes which were deeply deliberated during preparatory work andclosely followed by the public opinion.Hence, Turkish Civil Code entering into force on 4th October 1926 is a veryimportant acquisition of the Republic which strongly persists with its institutionsand rules. It still addresses the needs despite the 90 year time and preservesits revolutionary character.