Environmental criminal law, limitations and new legal possibilities in the light of international developments

The main topic of my study is an evaluation of the environmental violations in terms of the criminal law liability, which also includes a discussion about both certain limitations and strains as well as the opportunities. The study tackles several discussions regarding the Turkish Criminal Law in general together with the environmental criminal law implementations, criminal liability at the international area due to the damages resulting from the environmental pollution and a set of system and principles of criminal law about the recently rising phenomena of environmental violations caused by the commercial activities of the multinational companies. Although environmental pollution is generally considered within the field of administrative law; recently it has started to be addressed under the constitutional law, liability law and criminal law too. Moreover, the discussions about the necessity for criminal mechanisms increased dramatically due to the incapability of the administrative law as well as the limited scope of administrative arrangements and implementations. As a result of the globalization that has accelerated after the industrial revolution, the local environmental problems turned into multi dimensional problems whose impacts can be observed even in global scale. This drastic change triggered the discussions about the internationally binding and instrumental legal tools in terms of the environmental protection. The focal subject of this study is to make an evaluation of the discussions and the dynamism of these discussions about the ways in which law takes a stance and the territory of penal law debates regarding the protection of environment in the face of trespassing ecological violations, ecological crisis and rampant ecological destruction inevitably caused by the current improper industrialization and globalization that fail to follow the ecological principles of sustainable development, risk assessment and prevention.