Blood feud in Turkish Criminal Code

The subject of the thesis is the tradition of blood feud. Blood feud, may be defined: If a member of a group kills a member of another, members of the group of the dead man take revenge by killing the killer himself or one of his kinsmen. There has been killing of people because of blood feud although there has been many developmerts in every field.Blood feud functions as the means of punishment in the primitive societies where the political power is not institutionalised and differentiated. Blood feud appears as a conception of justice regarded as an alternative to the state monopoly of sanction. Moreover, the fact that the blood feud tradition has acquired new aspeçts which can be regarded as a rupture from the local context and as the transformation of norms, shows that this tradition cannot be explained as depending only of the state authority and punishment policy.The existence of blood feud is due to the fact that in regions in which such incidents occur frequently, the village communities could not be integrated in the wider society in which they live. The two basic causes of blood feud are economic and social. These are some basic reasons for beginning of the blood feud, which a number of other reasons may cause to continue.If a murder is committed for the motive of blood feud the culprit was executed according to the Act No. 765 (Turkish Penal Code) Article 450/10 According to the current Turkish Criminal Code (Act No. 5237) Article 82/1-j the penalty for this crime is qualified lifetime imprisonment.A great majority of blood feud crimes in Turkey are commited by young people who do not have criminal liability but capable of using arms.In order to prevent blood feud crimes there are steps taken by people themselves, one of them is reconciliation. Influential people and neighbours intervene to reconcile the groups. At the reconciliation in the Eastern Anatolia, South-Eastern Anatolia and Black Sea regions the injured party receives blood money. For the parties another practise is to become relatives through marriage. This is the most efficient prevention of blood feud. A third means of prevention of blood feud is to obtain the emigration of one of the parties to another region of the country. There was even an Act, No. 3236 regarding to provide the legal conditions for the emigration in order to prevent the blood feud crimes.In our opinion for prevention of blood feud the state should take the following measures; - The land reform laws should be passed. ? An efficient law policy and reform should be carried out. ? Security measures should be increased. ? The educational opportunities should be increased in the regions where blood feud still obtains. In our opinion only giving a harsh penalty is not enough to prevent the blood feud crimes.Key Words: 1) Turkish Criminal Code, 2) Murder, 3) Motive of Blood Feud.