Ali Yıldız*
In recent months Turkish society has been shaken by unspeakable acts of physical and sexual violence targeting women and children, some of which have taken place in public. What is even more shocking in these cases is that the perpetrators were for the most part convicted criminals released from prison early thanks to an amnesty introduced by the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) and its far-right ally, the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP).
According to the Judicial Statistics 2023 report from the Ministry of Justice there are 193,212 ongoing sexual offense investigations, and in 66,000 of these cases the victims are minors. Sexual abuse and assault, robbery, violent crime and drug use are the most frequent crimes committed in Turkey today.
Recent data published by the Ministry of Justice showed there were 362,422 inmates in Turkish prisons as of October 2024, meaning that Turkey has the sixth largest prison population in the world, following the US, China, Brazil, India and the Russian Federation.
Historical Context: Prison Population in 2005 was 70.277; while it was 120.814 in 2010.
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The number is high despite the fact that Turkey carried out three mass releases of prisoners: one in August 2016 to make room for political prisoners who would be detained during a two-year state of emergency declared after a failed coup in 2016; another in April 2020 to reduce the prison population in the face the COVID 19 pandemic; and the most recent in July 2023.
Although more than 100,000 prisoners were released under these amnesties, Turkey’s prison population is still set to increase. With more than 362,000 prisoners, Turkey’s actual prison population rate is about 416 per 100,000 people, compared to 73 in 2000, 81 in 2004, 144 in 2008, 180 in 2012, 251 in 2016, 324 in 2018, 319 in 2020 and 370 in 2023.
These statistics are alarming in many respects. First and foremost, they show that Turkish penal policy is wrong. When replacing its criminal laws in 2004, Turkish legislators made the mistake of assuming that the severity of punishment was the main deterrent. Thus, the new Penal Code (Law no. 5237) dramatically increased prison terms, while the Law on the Execution of Punishments (Law no. 5275) increased the time of a sentence that must be served to benefit from parole and probation. Before 2004 a convicted felon had to serve two-fifths of a given sentence, but the new law increased it to two-thirds and for some categories of crimes to three quarters. However, Turkish legislators had ignored the wisdom of Italian criminologist Cesare Beccaria, who said in 1764 that “One of the greatest curbs on crime is not the cruelty of punishments, but their infallibility … The certainty of a punishment even if it be moderate will always make a stronger impression than the fear of another which is more terrible but combined with the hope of impunity …”
Beccaria’s concept has been proven true throughout history. The National Institute of Justice of the US Department of Justice admitted that increasing the severity of punishment does little to deter crime and that more severe punishments do not “chasten” individuals. Official Turkish statistics also confirm Beccaria. The number of criminal investigations across the country was 1.7 million in 2000, 2 million in 2004, 5.3 million in 2009, 6.7 million in 2013, 7.4 million in 2016 and 9.3 million in 2019. According to 2023’s judicial statistics, there were 11 million criminal investigations across Turkey last year. While the public prosecutor’s offices handled 7,183,711 investigations in 2015, their number increased by 54.6 percent to 11,109,462 in 2023.
The criminal justice system dispenses justice by apprehending, prosecuting and punishing individuals who break the law. Confidence in that system is essential for deterrence. However, according to the OECD`s 2021 report, the confidence of the Turkish people in the judiciary fell by 22 points to 38 percent between 2010 and 2020. According to a poll conducted in October 2021, 78 percent of Turks do not trust the judiciary.
Criminals and most Turkish people have seen through the continuous revelations of corruption involving senior figures in the Turkish judiciary that those with enough money or political influence can escape justice regardless of the crime they committed.
They are not wrong since these revelations of corruption include the chief public prosecutor of Ankara accepting bribes from a drug lord; a senior judge in the Black Sea province of Samsun attending the birthday party of a fugitive criminal convicted of murder; the deputy chief public prosecutor of İzmir embezzling money from the companies under his supervision within the scope of investigations he was conducting; and the chief prosecutor of İstanbul accusing the president of the İstanbul Anatolian Judicial Commission of running a criminal scheme to obstruct justice and declaring that the judiciary is rotting and needs chemotherapy.
They are not wrong because the AKP’s de-facto coalition partner, the MHP, secured the release of mafia leaders such as Kürşat Yılmaz, Alaattin Çakıcı and others through the aforementioned amnesty laws, which were designed to ensure their release while political prisoners were excluded. In August 2016 the Turkish government enacted an emergency decree to release convicted felons to make room for people arrested during the state of emergency. With this decree at least 38,000 convicted felons were instantly released, while some 100,000 others have been gradually freed under this decree. However, more than 100,000 people who are perceived as members of the Gülen movement have replaced them.
Thus, by 2020 the prison population was over 300,000. In April 2020 the ruling AKP and its ally, the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), passed another early release bill under the pretext of reducing the prison population in the face of the COVID 19 pandemic. Despite numerous calls by national and international bar associations and human rights NGOs that asked the government to treat all prisoners equally in the legislation, the bill excluded political prisoners while facilitating the release of violent mob leaders.
These polls coupled with the above-mentioned statistics and corruption cases show that the Turkish criminal justice system is malfunctioning, or not functioning at all. Indeed, according to the World Justice Project’s 2023 report the Turkish criminal justice system was ranked 107th out of 142 countries.
Governing through fear
Another reason for the increasing number of criminal proceedings and the growing prison population could be the Justice and Development Party (AKP) government`s strategy of governing through fear. Prosecutions related to Articles 299,301 and 314 of the Turkish Penal Code (TCK) that regulate the offenses of “insulting the president”, “insulting the nation” and “membership in a terrorist organization,” respectively, are emblematic in this regard. The year 2023 witnessed the filing of 25,520 new cases under Articles 299 and 301 of the Turkish Penal Code. This marked a record high, demonstrating an escalation in the enforcement of these laws, despite international scrutiny. From 2019 to 2023, a total of 68,139 individuals were prosecuted under these legal provisions.[14] This is despite the fact that in 2021, in the case of Vedat Şorli v. Turkey (Application no. 42048/19), the European Court of Human Rights found that the provision of the Penal Code stipulating insulting the President of the Republic was not in conformity with the Convention and should be amended.
Statistics on proceedings regarding membership in a terrorist organization are even more staggering. According to a report published by opposition deputy Mustafa Yeneroğlu, the former chair of the Turkish Parliament’s Human Rights Committee, over 1.5 million investigations have been launched under Article 314 of the TCK since 2016.
Thus, government oppression of its critics is also a significant reason for overcrowded prisons and an overburdened judiciary. Therefore, the Turkish government must carry out effective reforms to ensure that all three branches observe fundamental rights and freedoms, address the problem of distrust of the judiciary and adopt a reasonable penal policy.
The alarming rise in Turkey’s prison population, the surge in violent crime and the erosion of public trust in the judiciary highlight a deeply flawed criminal justice system. The government’s approach — introducing harsher punishments — has proven ineffective in curbing crime as evidenced by both historical trends and contemporary data. Despite increased prison terms and restrictions on parole, crime rates, particularly number of violent offenses, continue to rise, and public confidence in the judiciary has plummeted to alarming levels. This reflects not only a malfunctioning of the justice system but also the broader social disillusionment with law enforcement’s ability to deliver fair outcomes.
Increasing the severity of punishments will not reverse these trends. The real solution lies in restoring confidence in the judiciary. This can only be achieved by ensuring its independence and impartiality, free from political influence and corruption. The judiciary must be empowered to administer justice without fear or favor, with accountability for both criminals and corrupt officials within the system. The unchecked impunity enjoyed by certain individuals — be they criminals or those within the judiciary itself — must end for the criminal justice system to regain its legitimacy. Only then can Turkey hope to see a significant reduction in crime and the restoration of public faith in its institutions.
* Ali Yıldız is a Brussels-based lawyer and founder of The Arrested Lawyers Initiative. The first version of this article was published on Turkish Minute on April 25, 2022.