The Conditions for the Application of Successive Crime in the Turkish Criminal Code

The act is one of the most important elements for the existence of a crime in criminal law. In this respect, the number of acts has an impact upon the number of crimes. As a matter of fact the general rule in Turkish criminal law is that: the number of crimes is determined by the number of acts and the number of punishments is determined by the number of crimes. This is named as a real joinder rule. However, if this rule is applied without exception, some unfair consequences may occur. In order to prevent these unfair consequences, some exceptions are provided in the Turkish Penal Code. One of them is the regulation of the successive crime. Indeed, according to the provision of Turkish Penal Code (TPC) art. 43/1: where a person commits the same act, more than once, against the same person, at different times in the course of carrying out a decision to commit a crime, a single penalty shall be given. However, this punishment may be increased from one-fourth to three-fourths. Although the other institutions of criminal law are included in the penal codes of many countries, the successive crime is not provided in the penal codes of many countries. As a consequence, the studies about successive crime in foreign doctrines are limited. In this respect, our study is not only important in terms of the Turkish doctrine but also in terms of foreign doctrines. In this study, the conditions for the application of successive crime that is an exception of the real joinder rule were examined. While this issue was handled, the legal basement of successive crime was put forward and it was benefited from Turkish doctrine and Turkish court decisions.