Nowadays no one adjudicates disputes according to the Islamic law. No formal pressure exists which can coerce a man, and thus the whole system rests on the built-in sanctions of reciprocity, self-help and public opinion. Before 1926, courts did exist which enforced a code based on the Sheriat. Before such a court it was even possible, on very limited grounds, for a woman to obtain a divorce from her husband.
So long as formal sanctions existed for breaches of the rules formal sanctions which carried the authority of both State and Prophet - it was in theory possible to enforce one's rights. In practice, it is obvious that large areas of the society of the Ottoman Empire - most rural and tribal areas - must have fallen outside the direct influence of the courts and made little if any use of them. I cannot therefore decide whether the present disregard for the Islamic rules, and certain abuses arising from this disregard, were normal in these villages in pre-Republican Turkey. Perhaps people in the villages always ignored the Sheriat when it suited their book. But I suspect that so long as people believed that the rules they recognised were the same as those enforced by urban courts, at the very least, these rules would carry more weight and be more effectively sanctioned by informal local sanctions. If I am right, then in this type of area, Ataturk's reforms have so far increased disorder in marital relationships.
The sanctions which in fact hold spouses together and en-