Criminal threats to maritime security

The law of the sea has developed within the scope of the traditional principles on which it is built and has taken its current form. It is crucial to protect these foremost principles so that the high seas, where the interests of all states and their nations, are not turned into an environment of chaos, except for the maritime areas over which states exercise their sovereign rights or sovereignty. Considering that the vast majority of the world's global trade takes place via the seas; It is regarded that a security problem that may occur on the seas will disrupt the supply chain and cause significant harm to humanity. Therefore, the law of the sea includes certain maritime security threats and measures to suppress them. However, the similar characteristics of threats to maritime security make it difficult to define these threats and determine the applicable law. Within the scope of this thesis, threats to maritime security determined by the United Nations are examined by classifying them according to their similar and different characteristics in accordance with developments in the academic literature. The thesis's objectives are to define these threats, which are the result of non-state actors and also constitute crimes, to determine the applicable law within the framework of the principles prevailing in the law of the sea, and to provide a basis for practitioners and researchers by examining the threats under sub-categories according to their relationship with the seas.