KEBABBLE In Turkey, take note
of the notary By Fazile Zahir
FETHIYE, Turkey - A British resident may
never set foot in a notary public's office, but in
Turkey one may be in and out of them every week.
The importance of notaries here is quite
remarkable, and they are involved in almost every
legal process.
Powers of attorney are
issued here, documents can be translated, cars
registered to new owners, a company operating
license can be applied for, company articles of
association must be
authenticated by a notary,
and they can even make out your will. In short,
notaries record matters of judicial importance,
private transactions and events where an
officially authenticated record or a document
drawn up with professional skill or knowledge is
required.
The man or woman who holds the
notary's position can trace his or her occupation
back to the scribae and notarius of
ancient Rome. Notaries are easily the oldest
continuing branch of the legal profession,
existing throughout the whole of the world.
The very general definition of their
duties in Turkey means that they can be called on
to attest to some of the strangest things. In
Istanbul last month, Yeliz Ceylan, 29, had her
efforts to lose weight recorded by her local
notary.
Ceylan had been considering an
unusual diet that involved buying special thermal
Lycra shorts and an assortment of salts from Lake
Lut that were advertised as guaranteeing weight
loss without dieting. When she expressed some
skepticism, the company offered to pay for a
notary to monitor her weight loss. The notary
measured her waist as 80 centimeters, stomach as
94cm and hips as 104cm. For 13 days, after work
Ceylan diluted the salts in a teacup of water and
rubbed the solution on her lower body and then
walked for an hour on a treadmill wearing the
thermal shorts.
Two weeks later, the
notary was on hand for a remeasuring, and Ceylan's
new measurements were waist 75cm, stomach 84cm,
and hips 96cm. She had gone down two dress sizes
in two weeks.Ceylan was delighted to announce that
none of her clothes fit anymore.
A
representative of the firm, Tilda Mayer,
discounted the possibility that the treadmill was
the key: "If you can't get on a treadmill to
exercise, just use the salts and wear the shorts
while you are doing your housework and you'll get
the same results." Only the notary can tell us
whether this sort of authentication activity was
worth getting a law degree for.
A
businessman in Siirt found the notary the best
place to lodge a prophetic protest about
corruption in his local council. Metin Uran had
won the council contract for garbage collection in
2005-06 but was distressed to learn that when a
new council leader, Nurettin Ertemel, arrived from
Istanbul, he overturned the 2006 decision and
reopened the bidding process.
He also told
Uran that he was no longer eligible to enter the
auction for the contract because his firm did not
own a JCB Dumper truck. On the morning before the
successful bid was due to be announced, Uran went
to the notary and made a declaration stating that
a firm from Istanbul called Akmercan, friends of
new council leader Nurettin Ertemel, would be
awarded the contract.
His prediction
proved to be correct and investigations began at
the council. It was discovered that Ertemel had
awarded the same firm multiple contracts in
Istanbul, and that the other two companies that
entered the auction were all registered to the
same address as Akmercan and owned by the same
man. To add insult to injury, it now appears
Akmercan doesn't have a dumper truck either. The
council's bidding processes are under continued
scrutiny.
The Erkunt tractor company felt
that the best way to convince its customers that
its tractors were exceptionally fuel-efficient was
to test them and have the results authenticated.
On June 18, the company put 2 liters of diesel
into one of its Servet 80 model tractors and set
about plowing.
The Servet plowed a
1,000-square-meter field in eight minutes and 48
seconds, traveling at a speed of 5.3 km/h. When
the machine stopped, the notary watched as the
remaining diesel was taken out of the engine and
then attested to the fact that only 0.75 liter had
been used during the experiment. The general
manager of the Erkunt company, Zeynep Erkunt
Armagan, said: "We always try to impress on
farmers how economical our tractors are, and now
we have proved it and had it verified by the
notary."
With election campaigns in full
swing here, the leader of the Independent Turkish
Party (Bagimsiz Turkiye Partisi), Haydar Bas,
wanted to let the electorate know just how serious
he was about his campaign promises. So he went to
a notary and had the following pledges legally
authenticated:
All housewives will receive a monthly wage of
500 liras (US$388).
Every woman giving birth will be given a gift
of 15,000 liras.
Families will be given benefits of 250 liras
per month for each child they are raising.
Every Turkish citizen over 18 years of age
will receive a monthly wage of 500 liras.
Minimum wage will be raised to 2,000 liras (it
is currently 562 liras gross).
Every farmer will be paid for half his crop
immediately after planting.
Diesel prices will be reduced to 0.8 lira per
liter.
While all of these are laudable
aims and he has gone to the trouble of getting
them legally documented, the one thing a notary
can't do is make you keep your promises.
Still, with about 1,500 notaries already
working in Turkey and such varied demands being
made on their professional services, they are
likely to remain the linchpin of the Turkish legal
system for the foreseeable future.
Fazile Zahir is of Turkish
descent, born and brought up in London. She moved
to Turkey in 2005 and has been writing full-time
since then.
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