Stalking

A person is completed as a whole with their material and moral existence. Therefore, the protection of the person, encompassing the whole, is only possible by attaching special importance to all the elements that cause the person's existence. With the Turkish Penal Code, not only the material, that is, physical existence of people is protected, but also their mental health and psychology, which are defined as their moral existence, are also protected. In this context, new types of offenses have been introduced to Criminal Law in order to protect people's mental health. With the amendment dated May 12, 2022, numbered 7406/8, article 123/A was added to the "crimes against freedom" section of the "crimes against persons" part of the Turkish Penal Code No. 5237, thereby introducing the "Crime of Persistent Stalking" into the legal literature. With the crime of persistent stalking, it is aimed to protect the moral integrity of people, and it is expected to prevent other grievances that may arise due to the nature of the relevant crime type. In this context, in order to fully understand the type of crime in question; The concepts of persistence and stalking were examined etymologically, and then they were subjected to a general evaluation together with the concept of "stalking", which is the concept of emergence. In order not to confuse the concept of persistent stalking with different concepts and to clearly distinguish it, a comparison was made with the concepts of "mobbing" and "bullying", which share similar processes with the formation of the crime, and then the place of the concept of persistent stalking in Turkish Law was investigated. After defining the relevant concept, the legal interest involved in accepting the concept of stalking as a crime was examined from the human rights perspective; The priority function of crime has been evaluated within the scope of "Right to Life" and "Right to Respect for Private and Family Life, Home and Communication". As a result of the evaluations, finally, by applying the Criminal Law technique, investigations were carried out on all material and moral elements of the crime. The crime in question was subjected to fault examination, and necessary technical evaluations were made within the scope of the General Provisions of the Turkish Penal Code and the Code of Criminal Procedure. Keywords: insistence, pursuit, preventive function, restlessness, anxiety