Public awareness of environmental crimes in the context of green criminology

Since the beginning of the domination of humanity on the environment, environmental issues have been consistently growing and reached an irrevocable level recently. As of the environment was considered as a right, environmental law has become a part of the solution-seeking to those issues. Being embodied in criminal law has led environmental issues to be considered in the criminology area. Green criminology looks at environmental crimes and penalties from a green perspective and aims to change governments' policies and cause environmental and social justice. This study concentrates on nature and environment terms, attitudes towards nature in history, considering the environment as a right, international and constitutional developments about environment, environmental crimes in the Turkish Criminal Code, green criminology's content and history, victim range of green criminology, environmental movement in Turkey, and environmentalism in civil society and social media. The study focuses on some of the environmental movements in Turkey, social campaigns for protecting the environment, social reactions, and representation of civil society movements and environmental campaigns on social media. Based on green criminology's theoretical framework, the study examines 18 and above years old individuals' environmental awareness, attitudes towards environmental dangers, and awareness of environmental legal regulations in Istanbul in regard to joining nongovernmental organizations and following environmental accounts on social media. The results of the study indicate that individuals who follow environmental social media accounts and are members of non-governmental environmental organizations have a higher awareness of the environment and environmental dangers, develop more positive attitudes towards the environment, and are more demanding to environmental legal regulations.