40 The Offence of Acting Contrary to Measures to Contain Contagious Disease (TPC ART. 195) CONCLUSION The epidemic disease called Novel Coronavirus COVID-19 continues to spread around the world by expanding its impact since the beginning of 2020. The global outbreak of the virus, declared as a pandemic by the World Health Organization, has thrown the whole world into chaos with a wide range of problems. The negative impact of the pandemic on the social order has also deeply affected the legal orders. In the current process, states are under the responsibility to take the necessary measures required by the situation to combat epidemics in order to protect public health and to ensure that all individuals act in accordance with these measures. Compliance with the measures taken by the competent authorities regarding the protection of public health is important in the fight against contagious diseases. In this direction, in our country, acting contrary to the measures regarding contagious diseases is regulated as an offence in our criminal code and is subject to criminal sanctions. Article 195 of the Turkish Penal Code No. 5237 regulates the offence of “acting contrary to the measures regarding contagious diseases” in the section of offences against public health, which is among the crimes against society. It can be said that with the aforementioned regulation, the legislator aims to prevent the acts and actions of persons who expose public health to danger by not complying with the measures taken by the competent authorities regarding the quarantine of the place where the infected or deceased person is located. On the other hand, various opinions are put forward in the doctrine that the measures taken by the competent authorities to quarantine the place where the disease is found, which are stipulated in Article 195 of the TPC, will constitute a violation of the “principle of definiteness” since they are not clearly defined in the text of the article; and that the determination of the content of the type of crime, which is in the nature of an open criminal norm, by leaving the definition of the content of the crime type to the administrative authorities by the regulatory acts of the administration and even by individual administrative acts will also constitute a violation of the principle of legality. The legal value protected by the provision on Acting Contrary to Measures to Contain Contagious Disease in Article 195 is the protection
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