Anthropologists have traditionally distinguished between inheritance, the transmission of rights to property, and succession, the transmission of offices or roles. In these villages this distinction is particularly clear and striking. The successful man with more than one married son transmits all his property but he cannot pass on his social position as a senior elder and head of a large and wealthy household. Thus, although his material wealth is passed on, his power and prestige are dissolved by his death.
The villagers acknowledged three sets of rules governing inheritance: the Turkish Civil Code, the Seriat, and custom. These sets of rules are not mutually consistent, but they do have some resemblance to each other on general points. The only rules which can be legally enforced are those which are least followed, the Turkish Civil Code.
No single consistent body of rules then governs inheritance. Which rules are followed, and how they are applied, depends on the state of family affairs, that is, the relative strength and the interests of the close kin involved. The allocation carried out at the time of the division into new junior households is usually, in fact if not in theory, definitive, and although disputes may drag on for years afterwards it is extremely difficult in practice to upset a settlement once it has been carried out.