The Victim Survived: When a Turkish Court Calls It Attempted Murder Instead of Assault

Turkish criminal law has no separate offence for a serious attack that fails to kill. The court chooses between two groups of provisions, and it chooses on what the person intended at the moment of the act. If the finding is an intent to kill, the charge is intentional killing under TCK 81 read together with the attempt provision, TCK 35. If the finding is an intent to injure, the charge is intentional injury under TCK 86, with the aggravating tiers of TCK 87 applied according to what the medical report records.

TCK 81 carries life imprisonment. Under TCK 35/2 the court imposes ten to eighteen years in place of life imprisonment, and fourteen to twenty-one years in place of the aggravated life imprisonment that TCK 82 attaches to eleven listed circumstances. The figure inside those ranges is fixed according to the gravity of the harm or danger actually caused. Intentional injury begins far lower and rises through tiers.

Nothing else in the two files needs to differ. The same knife, the same hospital, the same night — and a difference of years that turns entirely on a finding about what was in one person's mind.

Nobody testifies to intent. It is inferred, and Turkish courts draw the inference from a settled group of external facts. Counsel who knows what that group contains can see, from the file alone, which way the characterisation is likely to go.

• The instrument used, and whether it was capable of causing death. TCK 35/1 requires acts capable of producing the result; an object that could not have killed cannot ground an attempt.
• The part of the body struck — head, neck, chest and abdomen against limbs and extremities.
• The number of blows, their depth, and whether they were repeated after the first one landed.
• The distance, and for a firearm the direction in which it was aimed and discharged.
• Whether the person could have carried on and did not, or was physically prevented.
• What passed between the parties beforehand, including any threat made or message sent.
• What was done immediately afterwards — whether help was called, whether the scene was left.

Each of those is fixed by a document, and each of those documents is created in the first days: the scene sketch and photographs, the doctor's description of the wound track, the examination of the weapon, street and premises camera footage that is overwritten within weeks, and the statements taken while everyone involved is still at the police station. The same evidence base decides an ordinary assault or public order charge, but there the stakes of the inference are measured in months rather than years.

The report that arrives from the hospital or the forensic institute grades the injury. It does not grade the intent, and reading it as though it did is the most common mistake made when a family abroad first sees the file.

A life-threatening condition — hayati tehlike — is a finding under TCK 87/1(d), and its effect is arithmetical. The sentence set under TCK 86 is doubled and cannot be less than four years, or less than six years where the injury was committed with a weapon or in another circumstance listed in TCK 86/3. Where the injury caused the loss of an organ or of a sense, TCK 87/2 raises it further, with floors of six and nine years. A bone fracture or dislocation increases the sentence by up to one half under TCK 87/3, according to its effect on the victim's life functions. At the other end, where the injury was light enough to be repaired by simple medical intervention, TCK 86/2 gives six months to one year six months or a judicial fine, with a floor of nine months where the victim is a woman, and the case proceeds only on the victim's complaint.

Run the arithmetic and the gap becomes visible. A stabbing with a weapon that leaves a life-threatening wound sits in the region of six to nine years as an injury charge. The identical wound charged as attempted murder sits at ten to eighteen. That is the whole argument, and neither figure appears on the medical report.

Where the weapon was a firearm, a second file normally travels with the first. Carrying or possessing an unlicensed firearm under Article 13 of Law no. 6136 carries two to four years' imprisonment together with a judicial fine of one hundred to five hundred days, prosecuted alongside the main charge; where the weapon is a single firearm outside the Article 12/4 categories, kept with an ordinary number of cartridges at a home or workplace, Article 13/3 brings the range down to one to three years with the same fine band; how firearms offences are graded is set out separately.

TCK 35/1 attaches attempt liability only where the offence was left incomplete for reasons outside the person's control. TCK 36 states the other side of that rule: a person who voluntarily abandons the acts of commission, or who prevents the result by their own efforts, is not punished for the attempt at all, and answers only for the part already completed where that part is itself an offence. In a case where the other person survived, that means the injury sentence and nothing beyond it. Whether the stopping was a choice or a failure is decided from the same record as the intent — whether bystanders pulled the person away, whether the weapon jammed, whether the victim ran, who called the ambulance.

The characterisation also changes the procedure around it. Attempted murder is tried in the ağır ceza court, which under Article 12 of Law no. 5235 hears offences carrying aggravated life, life, or more than ten years; injury charges are usually heard in the asliye ceza court. Detention may be presumed available for both, because the CMK 100/3 catalogue lists intentional killing under TCK 81, 82 and 83 and also lists injury under TCK 87 and under TCK 86/3(b), (e) and (f). What differs is the ceiling. Under CMK 102/2 detention in an ağır ceza matter may run two years with extensions totalling a further three, against one year plus six months elsewhere, and CMK 102/4 caps the investigation stage at one year rather than six months. Those limits, and what can be argued against them, are set out under remand and judicial control.

None of it is closed by the indictment. Under CMK 226 the court may convict under a provision other than the one charged, but only after the accused has been notified in advance and placed in a position to answer it, with time given on request to prepare that additional defence. The characterisation moves in both directions, and it usually moves late. Where the person did not survive, a different set of provisions governs the file from the outset; those are set out on the page on murder and attempted murder charges.