What do the terms “rights in rem” and “rights in personam” mean in Turkish law? How should they be translated?
Although the terms “rights in rem” and “rights in personam”, which we come across in contract translations and particularly academic translations, are quite different from each other, they do not have opposite meanings.
The Latin words in these terms’ meanings are, respectively: “rem” thing, “personam” person and finally “in”, as a preposition, means against. Therefore “in rem”, which means against something, and what the thing is, is the singular state of the word “property”. Therefore “rights in rem”, can be defined as rights against properties.
Powered by Oxford Dictionary, in Lexico the phrase “rights in rem” is determined as “right against something or affecting it and therefore other people in general.” As for the term “rights in personam”, it can be defined as rights against a person with the same method.
The “person” here is a certain person and this must certainty arise from a legal relationship. In short, from the term “right in rem”, the right of the owner – the right holder – against a certain property; “right in personam” means the right of the owner only towards a certain person. While the right against property can be claimed against anyone; the right against a particular person by definition can only be asserted against that person.
Although the rights that can be claimed against everyone in Turkish law are classified as absolute rights, the term “rights in rem” refers to a property right and reflects real rights in terms of the word “rem”, which is the content of the term “rights in rem”. This is because absolute rights include rights that are not related to property such as personal rights, custody rights, intellectual rights.
On the other hand, the term “right in personam” can be translated as “nisbi hak” which refers to rights that can be claimed against a particular person in accordance with a particular legal relationship in Turkish law Examples of these – as they are binding for only the parties of the relevant legal relationship – are the rights to claim, formative rights and even some rights that fall into the individual entity.
If these terms are used together with action in the sense of lawsuit, “action in the rem” can be translated as real action and “action in personam” as action of debt, etc., depending on the subject of the action.
The German translation of the term “Rights in rem” is “dingliches Recht”. The term “Right in personam1 can be translated to German as “persönliches Recht”.
[1] https://www.lexico.com/definition/
