Unlawful assembly and demonstration crime

While the right of assembly has been well-studied by legal scholars in terms of its importance in a democratic society, its extent and limitations, the criminal law dimension of the assemblies remained under-explored in the legal literature. This thesis hopes to classify and analyse a variety of crimes and sentences adopted by the Law n.2911 on Assemblies and Demonstrations, by focusing one of the most important crime introduced by this Law, namely the article 28/1 on organizing or managing an unlawful assembly or demonstration and participating in their activities. Throughout this thesis, this crime will be named as "unlawful assembly and demonstration crime" and will be analysed by the commonly accepted crime analysis method in the Turkish Criminal Law doctrine. Unlawful assemblies are enumerated in article 23 of the Law on Assemblies and Demonstration. These clauses are the determining factors to identify the typicality of the crime. Nevertheless, it is essential to establish first the framework on the right for assembly, which is a constitutional right in order to study assemblies constituting a crime. All sanctions interfering the essence of the right will be outlined in the light of the article 34 of the Turkish Constitution, article 11 of the European Convention on Human Rights and its respective case-law as well as the other international treaties containing a clause on this right. In the light of the information given above, all peaceful assemblies without prior notice, press statements as well as the spontaneous assemblies and demonstrations will be put under the microscope under the title of "the element of unlawfulness". This study will address meetings, demonstration marches and other forms of protests subjected to the conviction by referring not only the legal doctrine but also the decisions on the individual applications and respective case-law. Finally, a theoretical debate on the special aspects of the crime, the sanctions to be applied as well as the principles and the rules of criminal procedure will give this study its final form and conclude related arguments.