When Knowing Twenty Crimes Is Not Enough: The Need for International Standards in Turkish Criminal Law Academia
A Critical Assessment of Criminal Law Scholarship in Turkey
There is a question that Turkish legal academia has postponed for far too long:
What should qualify a person to teach criminal law at the highest academic level?
In Turkey, becoming a professor of criminal law may give the impression of possessing comprehensive expertise in the field. Yet a closer examination raises an uncomfortable question: Is a professor of criminal law necessarily a scholar capable of producing internationally competitive criminal law scholarship?
The answer cannot simply be assumed to be yes.
A criminal law professor may spend an academic career repeatedly analysing a relatively limited number of offences, often reproducing the same statutory provisions, the same domestic case-law and the same doctrinal classifications. In some cases, an academic career may be built around approximately twenty major offence categories, with remarkably little engagement with comparative criminal law, international criminal law, human rights jurisprudence, empirical criminal justice, linguistic scholarship or contemporary international literature.
This is not an argument against specialisation.
It is an argument against academic isolation disguised as specialisation.
1. Knowing Criminal Offences Is Not the Same as Being a Criminal Law Scholar
A competent criminal law scholar must obviously know the elements of offences.
He or she must understand unlawfulness, culpability, attempt, participation, justification, excuse, concurrence of offences, sanctions and the general principles of criminal liability.
But this is only the beginning.
Criminal law is no longer an exclusively national discipline.
A modern criminal law scholar should be capable of reading and critically analysing the jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights, the Court of Justice of the European Union where relevant, the International Criminal Court, international criminal tribunals, foreign constitutional courts and leading foreign supreme courts.
He or she should be familiar with comparative criminal law.
A scholar writing about freedom of expression and insult should be able to engage with Strasbourg jurisprudence.
A scholar writing about criminal responsibility should understand developments in Germany, France, England, Italy and other major legal systems.
A scholar writing about evidence should be able to examine the common-law hearsay doctrine as well as continental approaches.
A scholar writing about international crimes cannot reasonably remain confined to Turkish textbooks.
The modern criminal law professor therefore needs considerably more than the ability to explain twenty offences.
The real question is not how many offences a professor knows. The real question is how many legal systems he or she can critically understand.
2. The Problem of Repetition
One of the most serious problems in Turkish criminal law scholarship is the repetition of established doctrinal material.
The same definitions are reproduced.
The same classifications are repeated.
The same examples appear in book after book.
The same Supreme Court decisions are cited.
The same arguments are reformulated with minor linguistic differences.
A new book is sometimes presented as a new contribution although much of its intellectual architecture already exists in several earlier publications.
This creates an academic paradox:
There may be an enormous volume of criminal-law literature without a proportionate volume of new ideas.
Quantity of publication should not be confused with quality of scholarship.
A legal academic system that rewards the production of pages rather than the production of ideas will eventually produce an abundance of books but a shortage of scholarship.
3. Citation Is Not Scholarship
Another issue requiring serious discussion is the culture of citation.
Citation has at least three functions.
First, it identifies the intellectual source of an argument.
Second, it permits verification.
Third, it demonstrates the scholar's engagement with existing literature.
Citation therefore cannot be reduced to placing numerous footnotes at the bottom of a page.
A paragraph containing ten citations may still be intellectually weak.
Conversely, a paragraph containing one carefully selected source may demonstrate genuine scholarship.
The real question should therefore be:
Does the citation demonstrate intellectual engagement, or does it merely create the appearance of academic authority?
International scholarship increasingly expects precision concerning sources, quotations, translations, editions and page references.
A scholar should be able to distinguish between:
an original argument and a borrowed argument;
a primary source and a secondary source;
a quotation and a paraphrase;
a genuine authority and a citation repeated from another author;
an original interpretation and an inherited doctrinal proposition.
These are not cosmetic matters.
They are matters of academic integrity.
4. Plagiarism Must Be Treated as an Existential Academic Problem
No academic system can tolerate plagiarism.
Yet plagiarism should not be understood merely as copying several sentences from another book.
Academic integrity requires much more.
The unacknowledged borrowing of another scholar's argument, structure, classification, original terminology or distinctive analysis can raise serious questions even where the wording has been changed.
The academic community therefore needs a culture in which scholars ask not merely:
“Have I copied the words?”
but also:
“Have I appropriated the intellectual work?”
A mature academic system should possess transparent procedures for detecting and addressing plagiarism.
Academic titles cannot be regarded as permanent immunity from intellectual scrutiny.
A professor should be held to a higher, not lower, standard.
5. The Turkish Language Problem
There is another issue that is rarely discussed openly enough:
legal Turkish itself.
A criminal law professor does not merely transmit legal knowledge. He or she also constructs the language through which future lawyers, prosecutors and judges understand criminal law.
Poor sentence construction, unnecessary repetition, ambiguous terminology, misuse of conjunctions and punctuation, artificial translations and syntactic confusion are therefore not merely stylistic defects.
They directly affect legal reasoning.
A badly written legal sentence may produce a badly understood legal rule.
This is particularly important in criminal law because criminal liability is governed by the principle of legality. Precision of language is therefore indispensable.
The scholar who demands strict interpretation of criminal statutes cannot simultaneously tolerate imprecision in the language used to explain those statutes.
Precision in criminal law begins with precision in language.
6. The Strasbourg Test: Can the Scholar Operate in an International Legal Environment?
The European Court of Human Rights provides an instructive benchmark.
Article 21 of the European Convention on Human Rights requires judges of the Court to be persons of high moral character who either possess the qualifications required for high judicial office or are jurists of recognised competence.
But contemporary European standards go beyond the formal wording of Article 21.
The Council of Europe states that candidates should have proficiency in at least one of the Court's official languages, English or French, and passive knowledge of the other. The Parliamentary Assembly likewise emphasises active knowledge of one language and passive knowledge of the other.
The standard is understandable.
A judge of an international court cannot depend entirely upon translations.
He or she must be capable of reading legal material, discussing sophisticated legal questions, participating in deliberations and producing or evaluating legal reasoning in an international linguistic environment.
This raises an uncomfortable question for Turkish criminal law academia:
How many professors who are regarded as authorities in Turkish criminal law could independently conduct a sophisticated legal discussion in English or French?
The question is not intended as an insult.
It is an academic quality-control question.
Indeed, the Council of Europe's own materials emphasise that the ability to speak and write one of the official languages at a good level is necessary for candidates for the Strasbourg Court, including the ability to conduct legal debate in that language.
The Court's selection mechanism therefore illustrates an important principle:
Academic seniority does not automatically equal international professional competence.
7. A Professor Should Be Tested Beyond the Turkish Legal System
There is something peculiar about the present academic model.
A person may become a professor of criminal law after demonstrating extensive knowledge of Turkish legislation and doctrine, while there is comparatively little institutional pressure to demonstrate:
advanced English or French;
comparative criminal law;
international criminal law;
European human rights law;
international legal research methodology;
foreign legal literature;
academic writing in a foreign language;
oral presentation before an international academic audience.
This creates a structural asymmetry.
The professor may be considered an unquestionable authority inside the national academic system while being unable to participate effectively in an international academic environment.
That gap should no longer be ignored.
8. The Legal Profession Examination Provides a Useful Analogy
There is another provocative but legitimate question:
Should criminal law professors themselves be required to pass an objective professional examination?
Turkey has introduced a central examination mechanism for entry into certain legal professions.
The underlying philosophy is simple:
A person who wishes to perform an important legal function should demonstrate a minimum level of professional competence through an objective assessment.
Why should academia be completely insulated from the same principle?
A professor is not merely an employee of a university.
A professor of criminal law trains future judges, prosecutors, lawyers and academics.
The consequences of inadequate teaching therefore extend far beyond the university.
9. Should Criminal Law Professors Take the Judgeship Examination?
At first sight, the proposal may appear absurd:
Why should a professor take a judgeship examination after becoming a professor?
But the question becomes less absurd when the functions of the two professions are compared.
A criminal law professor teaches the law.
A judge applies the law.
Both therefore require substantial knowledge of:
substantive criminal law;
criminal procedure;
evidence;
constitutional principles;
human rights;
judicial reasoning;
interpretation;
case-law.
If a professor claims that he or she is an unquestionable authority in criminal law, demonstrating competence in an objective examination should not be humiliating.
On the contrary, it should be a professional badge of honour.
The proposal should therefore not necessarily be understood as requiring every existing professor to become a candidate for judicial office.
Rather, it should be considered as a benchmarking mechanism.
For example, promotion to the highest academic rank in criminal law could eventually require demonstrated competence in the core subjects tested in professional legal examinations.
10. An International Standard for Criminal Law Professors
Turkey needs an objective and internationally compatible standard for criminal law academics.
Such a standard might include at least the following components:
A. Substantive Criminal Law
Candidates should demonstrate comprehensive knowledge of:
general principles of criminal law;
offences against persons;
offences against property;
economic crimes;
public administration offences;
sexual offences;
cybercrime;
organised crime;
international crimes;
sanctions and sentencing.
B. Criminal Procedure
Knowledge should extend beyond textbook definitions to contemporary jurisprudence concerning:
fair trial;
right to defence;
evidence;
witness testimony;
hearsay;
search and seizure;
interception;
detention;
exclusionary rules;
judicial impartiality.
C. Human Rights
A criminal law professor should be able to analyse the relevant jurisprudence of the Strasbourg Court rather than merely cite the names of leading cases.
D. Comparative Law
At least two foreign legal systems should be studied seriously.
Reading translated textbooks is not enough.
The scholar should be capable of reading primary foreign legal material.
E. Foreign Language
At least one international legal language—preferably English—should be demonstrated through an objective examination.
A passive reading score alone should not be sufficient.
A professor should be capable of writing and speaking legal English.
F. Academic Integrity
Plagiarism, fabricated references, inaccurate quotations and systematic citation manipulation should have serious academic consequences.
G. Turkish Legal Writing
Candidates should demonstrate the ability to write clear, grammatically correct and legally precise Turkish.
11. International Peer Review Should Become Normal
Another reform is essential:
international peer review.
A criminal law article should not necessarily be evaluated exclusively by scholars from the same national academic circle.
At least some high-level academic publications should be reviewed anonymously by foreign specialists.
This would create an important test:
Would the argument survive outside the Turkish academic ecosystem?
If a thesis is convincing only because the same group of scholars continuously cites one another, it has not yet passed the international test.
12. The Strasbourg Model Offers an Important Lesson
The Council of Europe's Advisory Panel does not simply ask whether a candidate has an impressive title.
It examines qualifications, competence, experience, personal qualities and linguistic abilities. Recent Council of Europe material expressly refers to integrity, sound judgment, independence, judicial temperament, communication and linguistic abilities, as well as the ability to explain complex legal matters clearly.
This approach contains a lesson for Turkish academia.
Titles should be consequences of competence, not substitutes for competence.
“Professor” should not terminate intellectual evaluation.
It should increase the burden of justification.
13. The Real Question Is Not Whether Turkish Professors Are Intelligent
This debate should not be reduced to whether Turkish criminal law professors are intelligent.
Many undoubtedly are.
Nor should it become a personal attack against individual academics.
The issue is structural.
An academic system may contain highly intelligent individuals while nevertheless producing inadequate incentives.
If the system rewards:
the number of publications rather than originality;
citations rather than intellectual contribution;
titles rather than international competence;
domestic repetition rather than comparative research;
seniority rather than demonstrable ability,
then even talented scholars will eventually adapt to those incentives.
The problem is therefore not merely the professor. It is the academic system that defines what a professor is.
14. From National Authority to International Scholar
There is an enormous difference between being a respected authority within a national legal system and being an internationally recognised scholar.
The first may require mastery of national doctrine.
The second requires something more demanding.
An internationally recognised criminal law scholar must be able to enter an intellectual conversation that does not depend upon the Turkish language, Turkish legislation or Turkish academic hierarchy.
He or she must be able to say:
“This is my argument, and I can defend it before scholars from Germany, France, England, Italy, the United States or Strasbourg.”
That is the real test.
Conclusion: It Is Time to Raise the Bar
Turkey does not need more criminal law books merely for the sake of increasing the number of books.
It needs better criminal law scholarship.
It needs scholars who can read beyond the Turkish doctrinal universe.
It needs scholars who can write in internationally accepted legal English.
It needs scholars who understand the difference between citation and scholarship.
It needs scholars who treat plagiarism as a serious violation of academic integrity.
It needs scholars who can write Turkish with the precision expected from specialists in a discipline where a single word can determine criminal liability.
And, above all, it needs an academic system that is willing to test its professors rather than merely honour them.
The European human rights system already provides an important example. The selection of judges for the Strasbourg Court requires candidates to satisfy demanding standards concerning legal competence, experience and language. English and French are not decorative qualifications; they are functional requirements of international judicial work.
Turkish criminal law academia should draw the same lesson.
A future system could require candidates for professorship in criminal law to demonstrate, through transparent and objective procedures:
(1) comprehensive criminal-law knowledge,
(2) criminal-procedure competence,
(3) human-rights competence,
(4) comparative-law knowledge,
(5) foreign-language proficiency,
(6) academic-integrity compliance,
(7) high-quality Turkish legal writing, and
(8) the ability to solve practical legal problems.
Passing a professional legal examination—or an equivalent national competency examination—could be one possible component of such a system.
There is nothing degrading about asking a professor to prove that he or she knows the law.
What is degrading for an academic system is the opposite:
granting intellectual authority without continuously testing intellectual competence.
The ultimate objective should not be to humiliate Turkish criminal law professors.
It should be to make the title “Professor of Criminal Law” mean something internationally.
And perhaps the most uncomfortable question of all is also the most useful:
If a professor of criminal law cannot pass an objective examination in the law he or she teaches, cannot conduct a serious legal debate in an international language, cannot produce original scholarship, and cannot demonstrate impeccable academic integrity—on what basis should society regard that person as an authority in criminal law?
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