Turkish legal procedure for sorting out the confusion is itself complex and bureaucratic. Decisions are made on written evidence in Ankara, where all records are kept. This leads to slow and lengthy correspondence, and cases frequently last for years. The young men who act as judges in the local areas are in fact the subordinate investigating officers of a centralised judicial machine.
Village opinion condemns resort to the courts. It is shameful for kinsfolk to be unable to reach a compromise among themselves, and foolish to give lawyers a chance to eat their property. The range of questions and investigations, the time the whole business takes, and the numerous visits to the court, generally make it far more bother than it is worth.
A more serious objection which one might have expected from the villagers is that the decisions of the courts do not correspond to village notions of right and wrong. It is certainly true that legal rights seldom correspond to acknowledged customary village rights. But the villagers never complained on this account, and it is not hard to find reasons why they did not do so.
First, any one village uses the courts so seldom that the discrepancies do not become obvious. Secondly, in any dispute over land, both sides have a claim under village custom and believe themselves to be in the right. Whichever side wins will