Plunder

Plunder, that is also known as looting in everyday language, is regulated by Articles 148, 149 and 150 of the Turkish Criminal Code (TCC), in the part that regulates offenses against persons, by the provisions relating to offences against property, such as plunder, qualified plunder, and the conditions subject to less punishment. The subject matter of the present studies are regulatory issues of the TCC about plunder. Plunder is an avoidance of delivery of a property or forcing a person to resist taking over the delivery by use of threat or violence, and mentioning that he intends to hurt himself or one of his acquaintances, or executing an act aimed to violation of one's corporal and sexual immunity, or giving severe damage to his property. Here, in the commission of the offense, the person may violate himself as well as the act of violence may be directed to his close people. Besides, for the formation of the offense, use of threat or force is necessary. Plunder is a type of an intended offense and belongs to instantaneous crimes as it is considered to be committed regardless of whether the offender has achieved the result or not. The offense of plunder, protects a few legal values. Plunder implies that for obtaining a property, an attack on a person's life, body or sexual privacy is made. As such an attack is committed in order to obtain property, the real protected legal value is property, and in many countries plunder as a kind of offense is classified as a crime against property. Plunder is a compound type of offense as it combines a few offenses, that is, force, threat and theft. In this regard, the offender is not punished separately for each of them, but for the offense of plunder. As the offense of plunder protects more than one legal value, it requires maximum sanctions comparing to other crimes against property. Keywords: Plunder, Force, Threat, Theft, Property