Urgent need for an ecocide law
The efforts to include the offence of ecocide in legal regulations continue. Baş underlined that the current regulations protect the interests of capital and said that the law on ecocide should be introduced as urgently as possible.

Tuğçe ÇELİK
The fight for the criminalisation of acts that cause irreversible environmental destruction in the world as a crime of ecocide continues.
When the signatures submitted by the Ecocide Law Citizens' Initiative to the Petition Commission of the Grand National Assembly of Turkey for the ecocide law proposal failed to yield any results, a lawsuit was filed at the Ankara 4th Administrative Court. However, the lawsuit was rejected by the court on the grounds that it was ‘not in accordance with the procedure’. İlksen Dinçer Baş, member of the Ecocide Law Citizen Initiative, said: ‘The fact that the law-making process was taken to court proved that the ecocide law is no longer just an idea, but a legal regulation that is in need, as it is all over the world.
Drawing attention to the fact that the current laws do not protect nature, Baş said, ‘Article 181 of the Constitution states that “anyone who intentionally disposes of wastes or residues into the soil, water or air in a way that harms the environment shall be sentenced to imprisonment from six months to two years”. However, the basis for proof of the offence is not the Constitution, but the regulations. Regulations are being changed to protect capital at the cost of jeopardising the very existence of nature.’
ECOCIDE IN MARMARA
Baş continued as follows: ‘Every institution and organisation must take responsibility for the destruction it will bring to the nature. It is the duty of the industry to operate the treatment facility and the duty of the state to monitor it. So far, we have been destabilising the balance of nature, and the climate crisis is a result of this. The relation between nature and human beings needs to be re-defined and established on a legal basis. The ecocide law proposal is also an issue that civil society is endeavouring for.’
Baş stated that the examples that first come to mind when it is mentioned ecocide crime scene are Marmara Sea and İliç-Çöpler Gold Mine. Baş noted the following: ‘The Marmara Sea has turned into a sewage pit. In May 2022, we exposed the destruction of nature around Marmara on site. Saying ‘Marmara is an Ecocide Crime Scene’, we pointed to the rivers that have turned into toxic, wastewater canals that deliver industrial pollution to the sea, and the thermal power plants that poison the air. There has been no progress. We filed criminal complaints in 20 provinces in case of the slide of the leach pile in İliç, which was referred to as an ‘accident’. The operations of Çöpler Gold Mine are a crime scene where the crime of transnational ecocide is committed. Considering the slaughter of forests by Cengiz Holding for the Ida Mountains Halilağa Copper and Gold Mine, the one million trees that have been cut down so far and the destruction that will occur once the gold mine is active, we can say that the Ida Mountains will become a new crime scene of ecocide.’
WHO IS IN FAVOUR OF THE LEGAL SYSTEM?
BirGün columnist Özge Güneş highlighted that significant efforts have been put forth to criminalise ecocide as part of the fight against environmental destruction. Güneş said the following: ‘The main driver of environmental destruction is not only the insufficiency of the laws. We face a situation where laws are either bent in favour of the interests of corporations or directly ignored. We should also discuss how the legal system works and in favour of whom. Along with the neoliberal transformation, we witness that the public authority is aligned in favour of the market in terms of environmental policies. This is exactly what shapes how the legal system operates. This mechanism clearly demonstrates the conflict between the public welfare and the market.’
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WE ARE LOSING OUR WETLANDS
Today is World Wetlands Day. 2 February is celebrated every year around the world aiming to raise awareness on wetlands. Dursun Yıldız, President of the Water Policy Association, emphasised that half of the wetlands in Turkey have lost their characteristics in the last 60 years. Yıldız said, ‘’Wetlands and lakes of our country are heavily endangered. Conservation of our wetlands and lakes has no longer been a matter of choice for us and it is now an issue that we must address as a duty.’
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EVEN FUTURE GENERATIONS WILL BE AFFECTED
Emphasising that the İliç mining disaster will adversely affect not only those living in the region but also future generations, Baş said that it should be considered as a crime of ecocide.
Baş listed the reasons as follows:
-The destruction of nature was done wilfully. It cannot be brushed off by saying ‘it was a case of negligence’. All the warnings were turned a deaf ear and the acts leading to these results were kept on despite the known consequences.
-This natural destruction is very widespread in its area of impact. Contamination reaching the Euphrates River has a cross-border character that endangers other countries in the Euphrates basin.
-The lithosphere has been significantly and irreversibly damaged.
-As a result of this destruction of nature, all organisms exposed to contamination and related impacts are under the risk of death or serious loss of health.
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A LAW COULD PREVENT THE IMPUNITY OF NATURE DESTRUCTION
‘Ecocide is a crime of intentional and immoral destruction of nature committed by corporations and sovereign states,’ said Wendy Wiseman, a faculty member at the University of California, Department of Environmental Studies.
‘Currently, 15 countries enact ecocide laws,’ Wiseman said. The goal of many activists is to include ecocide law in the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC) alongside genocide and crimes against humanity. All signatory countries, including Turkey, must adapt their systems to the ICC.’
Wiseman continued: ‘’Since most legal systems are centred on private property and the individual's exclusive rights, damage to the biosphere has fallen outside the realm of justice. Uncontrolled violence against the biosphere through industrialised exploitation and development is not only fundamentally legal but also accepted as a necessity of modernisation. Deforestation, fossil fuel extraction, herbicides and pesticides leaching into soil, water and our bodies are of course extremely profitable. But the ruthless exploitation of the environment rigorously actualises the supposed ‘superiority’ of humanity over nature as a necessity. This anthropocentric bias has long spared the most horrendous polluters from any accountability. However, it has become clear that we are jeopardising the present and future generations of all species once the planet is turned into a mere commodity and waste dump. Ecocide laws are initiatives to move legal attention to violent crimes beyond the narrow anthropocentrism of most legal systems. Legal recognition of crimes against nature can end impunity for the widespread destruction of the biosphere and make the polluters to pay the price."
Note: This text has been translated from the article titled Ekokırım yasası acilen çıkmalı published in BirGün newspaper on February 2, 2025.