The crime of migrant smuggling in Turkish Criminal Law

Migrants smuggling can be described briefly; the illegal entry of a person into the country, enabling them to stay in or get out of the country illegally, in order to obtain a material benefit. First of all, smuggling of migrants causes many serious human rights violations. During this smuggling activity, groups of children and women are forced to travel for days or weeks in the truck's hatches or in their secret compartments in an airless environment or they are drowned in the midst of the sea because they are placed in overcrowded boats. Despite these adverse conditions, the survivors are kept hungry and thirsty for days with unhealthy conditions in a few square meters in the countries where they are brought to. The vast majority of these people who migrated due to poor conditions in their countries seem to be exposed to various diseases in these places where they are held forcibly. It is unacceptable for immigrants to be subjected of treatment that violates human dignity. Especially, in recent years, civil wars, political and economic instabilities in neighbor countries have led to a significant increase in illegal immigration incidents and the crime of migrant smuggling in Turkey. In order to prevent this increase and further exploitation of migrants who have to leave their countries, there are actions on many areas such as readmission agreements and so on. Since there is limited amount of academic studies in the area of criminal law, the issue of migrant smuggling crime has been chosen for thesis's topic in order to contribute to the literature, to draw attention to the serious increase in migrant smuggling activity in the recent years and to give a solution for this issue by expressing the problems in theory and practice. In this study, the migrant smuggling offence has been examined with criminal law technics in the context of Court of Cassation's decisions, international law and the comparative law. Keywords: Migrant, Smuggling, Illegal Migration, The Crime of Migrant Smuggling, International Crimes.