Identifying the legal interest protected by environmental offences is not a theoretical luxury. The answer directly shapes how an offence is interpreted and which forms of harm are considered relevant under criminal law.
An anthropocentric approach protects the environment insofar as it is necessary for human life and health. A purely ecological approach, by contrast, treats soil, water, air, animals and plants as worthy of legal protection not only because they benefit humans, but also because they possess value in their own right.
For the environmental offences in the Turkish Criminal Code, the more convincing model is one that reconciles rather than opposes these perspectives. The environment is the shared foundation of life for humans, animals, plants and future generations. Risks to human health remain central, but they are not the only forms of harm that criminal law should recognise. The destruction of an ecosystem, contamination of a water source or loss of a habitat may constitute serious wrongdoing even where no immediate individual human victim can be identified.
This mixed approach does not turn “the environment” into an abstract slogan. On the contrary, it allows the object of protection to be defined more accurately by treating air, water, soil and living systems as interconnected.
Against the background of today’s climate and biodiversity crises, criminal law falls short if it asks only: “Which person has already been harmed?” Environmental damage is often dispersed, delayed and intergenerational. When the law cannot immediately identify a victim, the harm does not disappear – it merely remains outside the case file.