Acts of coercion and threats in Turkish Criminal Cod

One of the essential requirements of freedom of will is the ability of individuals to make decisions and act accordingly without coercion. It can be stated that the most common forms of coercion are force and threat. In the Turkish Criminal Code, the acts of force and threat are regulated in numerous offenses and in various forms. Since these acts are frequently regulated together in the Code, and since earlier scholarly views treated coercive threat as a manifestation of force and examined them within the same subject matter, this study addresses the acts of force and threat collectively. These acts are regulated in the Code essentially in three different ways. First, threat and force are regulated as independent offenses. Second, considering the instrumental nature of these acts in other offenses, force and threat are also regulated as constituent elements of other offenses. Third, these acts are regulated as a ground excluding culpability, whereby the person who compels another to commit an offense through force or threat is held liable as an indirect perpetrator for the offense committed. When determining the meaning of these acts in cases where they are regulated as constituent elements, reference is primarily made to the Offense of Threat and the Offense of Force. Furthermore, the variety and large number of offenses in which force is regulated as a constituent element has increased the frequency of their commission, thereby enabling a more detailed examination of force in these offenses than in the offense of force itself. In this study, the acts of force and threat are first examined within the scope of independent offense types. Subsequently, based on these explanations, the offense types in which force and threat are regulated as constituent elements, as well as the use of these acts to compel another to commit an offense, are addressed.