مرکز منطقه ای اطلاع رساني علوم و فناوري - Legislative Efforts Regarding to the Hate Crimes in Turkish Law in the Light of the Hate Crimes Legislations in Comparative Law

Abstract :

Although the commitment of an offence with a bias/hate motive is pretty old; it is ratherly new to define this act as an hate crime and to legislate it in criminal codes. The concept of hate crime which arised almost a half century ago in comparative law, is now spesifically designed in many contemporary, developed legal systems. Thus, it is the general tendency to legislate the bias motive as an aggravating circumstance. Moreover, human rights related supranational organisations are also promoting and recommending their member states to make a spesific legislation on hate crime. However, there is still no legislation applied in Turkish law so far and the lack of such a legislation is considered as a missing point in turkish criminal law system. As a result of the work to fill this gap, a “Draft of Hate Crimes Act” is prepared by Turkish NGO initiatives. In this study, first some of the basic legal instruments of hat ecrime in comparative law will be observed and in the light of this observation, The Draft on Hate Crimes in turkish Law will be examined in details. Lastly, some suggestions and evaluations related to the future projections on the fight against hate crimes will be delivered.