“Crime and Criminalization 2021”

In our fifth report on student activism, we closely examined the patterns of crime and criminalization in the news.

We present the fifth of the reports we prepared on news about student activism under the title of crime and criminalization. Criminalization is one of the prominent strategies used in the process of labeling and stigmatizing undesirable, discriminated, and assumed troublesome social segments. In the broader and more comprehensive meaning of the word, “power” criminalizes and punishes certain acts and their actors. What is a crime and who is a criminal is determined in proportion to the degree of democracy in the political atmosphere. In Turkey and in similar authoritarian systems, the cluster of crime and criminals is expanding. These systems treat a series of actions that would be otherwise considered as the exercise of the most basic human rights: rights and actions such as expression of thought, assembly and peaceful action as crimes.

Author: Beyza Kural
Advisor: Prof. Burak Özçetin
Translator: Özge Karlık