Trabzon’da Suç ve Suçlu: Bir İngiliz Konsolos Raporunun Düşündürdükleri
Crime and Criminals in Trabzon: Reflections on a Consular Report

Summary/Abstract: Especially since 1960s social and economic history began to challenge the long-contested supremacy of political history in history studies. Trending social and economic historians who based their explanations of Ottoman history and Modern Turkey mostly on structuralism and Marxist theory, tried to seek the causes of the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire in certain social and economic factors giving the same universal results. This approach, while useful, had its weakness in it as it cannot answer why certain conditions do not produce the same results in different cultures and places. This study, although it delves into legal and political issues connected to social and economic conditions in an Ottoman province in fin de siecle, refrains from sticking to a single theory. Instead, this short paper aims at interpreting the concepts of “crime” and “the criminal” in respect to the perception of social justice cross-referencing several disciplines such as social psychology, law and economy with reflections on the Republican Turkey. The essay first analyses the etiology of crime and criminal in the conceptual framework of human nature and moral conscience without falling into the trap of historical determinism. Then, it proceeds into a historical context where a certain British consul, Alfred Biliotti reported his reflections in an integral province of the Ottoman Empire, Trabzon right after the legal reforms of 1879. His invaluable and insightful reports provide the connection with the first part of the essay to demonstrate the real reasons behind increasing crime rates that endured right into the Republican times. The study has its limitations in terms of the primary documents used. Among numerous reports of Biliotti investigated, only the ones that directly deals with the conceptual framework is used. Same concern was in effect when keeping the sociological and legal definitions conscise.

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