Scarlat or Scarlatŭ Turnavitu (also known as Turnavitul and Charles Tournavito or Tournavitou; 1876) was a Wallachian, later Romanian, schoolteacher, politician, and jurist. He was born into a prosperous family with origins in the high-ranking boyardom, in either his father's village of Budișteni, Muscel County, or in nearby Pitești, Argeș County. During his youth, Wallachia and neighboring Moldavia were Romanian-inhabited tributary states of the Ottoman Empire, with a set of conservative laws imposed in the 1820s, as Regulamentul Organic. Turnavitu and two of his three brothers, Ștefan and Demostene, represented the liberal and nationalist opposition, whose principles they assimilated during their early education in Golești and Bucharest. They endured as lifelong associates of the Golescu family, whose younger members guided their political ascent. During the 1830s and early '40s, Scarlat traveled the country as a reformer, taking charge of primary schools and pioneering teacher education in Giurgiu, Buzău, and finally Craiova.
Turnavitu emerged as an organizer of a successful Wallachian liberal revolution in June 1848, when he created Craiova's National Guard and was sent as that city's envoy to Bucharest. In Pitești, the Turnavitus staged public burnings of Regulamentul and the register of boyar ranks. During an interval of anarchy in late June, he was present at the standoff between revolutionary supporters and the conservative Wallachian military forces, and afterwards convinced Neofit II Geanoglu, the Wallachian Metropolitan Bishop, not to take over as national governor. The consolidated revolutionary government, comprising his Golescu friends, made him Prefect of Râmnicu Sărat County, where he stifled counterrevolutionary movements, while following with alarm the Russian Empire's takeover of Moldavia. He tried to generate armed resistance, including as the Imperial Russian Army stormed into Wallachia, but was advised to the contrary by his superiors, and was ultimately captured by the Russians in Focșani.
The deposed Prefect was held in Văcărești prison, where he was reunited with Ștefan Turnavitu. While the latter recanted and was eventually pardoned, Scarlat became known and admired for his defiance. The post-revolutionary Wallachian Prince, Barbu Dimitrie Știrbei, tried to obtain clemency for him from his Ottoman overlords, and, even though he failed in this effort, he made sure to relax his prison regimen. Upon ending his six-year sentence, Turnavitu was hired by Știrbei as a judge in Argeș. Știrbei's successor, Caimacam Alexandru II Ghica, promoted him back into the boyardom, as a Serdar in 1857. By then, Turnavitu had joined the National Party, promoting the cause of Moldo–Wallachian unionism. He became a representative of Argeș's peasants in the ad hoc Divan after winning elections in September 1857.
Turnavitu was then sent to the Elective Assembly of 1859—thus contributing directly to the establishment of an embryonic Romanian state, the United Principalities. Initially a centrist partisan of Domnitor Alexandru Ioan Cuza, who served for a short while as a prosecutor, he became a tax resister, and was tried as such by Cuza's regime. He returned to politics after Cuza's ouster in 1866, serving for a while in the Assembly of Deputies, where he embraced left-wing nationalism and helped shape an outstandingly restrictive Romanian nationality law. His memory was revived in the 20th century by historical novelist Camil Petrescu, who depicted him as a slightly ridiculous figure, caught up in the events of 1848.