The Turkish criminal justice system gained a new look after a comprehensive reform in 2005. As a part of this reform, probation was organised as a complementary element of the sanction and execution system. The establishment of the institutional structure was left for later. Since the establishment of the institutional structure took time, the practitioner showed a cautious and reluctant approach in the first 5-year period. Until the discovery of probation by politicians in 2012. In Türkiye, as in many other countries in the long history of probation, probation has turned into a pragmatic instrument used to quickly solve the problem of an ever-increasing prison population. This useful instrument has been used again and again in 2013, 2014, 2020 and 2023 and will probably be used again in 2025.
Although probation has greatly eased the burden of the execution system, it has not solved the problem of overcrowding in prisons. Since 2005, the prison population in Türkiye has steadily increased, exceeding 400,000.
In this presentation, the Turkish criminal justice system will be evaluated as a whole, and a proposal for solutions will be presented under headings such as the architecture of punishment, rehabilitation, personnel, and recidivism.
Moderated by Marayca Lopez, Board Member, ICPA, United States
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Assoc. Prof. Hakan A. YAVUZ
Lawyer, Lecturer, Ankara Yildirim Beyazit University, Türkiye
Hakan A. Yavuz graduated from Ankara University Faculty of Law in 2002. He completed his PhD in 2011 with his Probation in the Criminal Justice System thesis. After serving as a public prosecutor for nearly twenty years, he became a lecturer. Between 2014 and 2018, he served as a judicial counsellor at the Embassy of Turkey in the Netherlands.
Academically, he focused on the search for alternatives in the criminal justice system and alternative criminal sanctions. In addition to his books titled “Penal System and Probation” and “Alternative Methods to Prosecution in Criminal Procedure”, he has many articles published in national and international academic journals in Turkish and English. He is a member of the Ministry of Justice Ankara Prison Monitoring Board. He is currently a faculty member at Ankara Yıldırım Beyazıt University Faculty of Law, Department of Criminal Law.
