kazas

Kaza is a Turkish noun meaning an accident or misfortune, most commonly used for traffic accidents. The plural form kazas is used when referring to multiple incidents. In everyday Turkish, it appears in phrases such as trafik kazası (traffic accident), iş kazası (work accident), and kaza raporu (accident report). The term can denote a wide range of unintended events, from minor mishaps to serious incidents, and is widely used in news reporting, insurance, and legal contexts.

Historically, in the Ottoman Empire, a kaza was an administrative district within the broader provincial structure, governed by a kadı (judge). The kaza functioned as a local jurisdiction that combined judicial and civil administration and was typically subdivided into smaller units. This system was part of the empire’s bureaucratic organization and persisted into the 19th century, undergoing reforms as modern administrative practices developed. In the early Republican era, kazas were gradually replaced by the contemporary district (ilçe) system as Turkey reorganized its local governance.

In modern usage, the administrative meaning of kaza is largely historical, and the primary contemporary meaning remains the ordinary sense of accident. The term also appears in historical discussions of Ottoman administration and can be encountered in older texts or place-name contexts within Turkish-speaking regions.