Examination and Analysis of the Binding Precedent Made by the General Board of the Supreme Court Stating that the Crime of Making Unauthorized Changes in Agricultural Land Use is Instantaneous and is Subject to Lapse of Time

The division of crimes in terms of the length of time of committing the crime is one of the topics discussed among legal scholars and judges, and there have always been differences of opinion in determining the examples of this division.This difference of opinion in practice has caused different judgments to be made by different branches of the courts, an example of this, which at the time of the writing of this article is a hot topic of discussion in legal circles, is determination of the instant or continuous nature of the crime of "making unauthorized change in agricultural land use mentioned in Article 3 of the Preservation of the Use of Agricultural Lands and Gardens Act".The General Board of the Supreme Court on June 21, 2022, while issuing a binding precedent in this regard, put an end to these differences of opinion among courts by considering unauthorized change in land use as an instantaneous offence.In this article, the said decision has been examined and analyzed from different points of view and certain criticisms have been made. According to the results of this research, although the result of the binding precedent handed down by the General Board of the Supreme Court to include the regulations regarding lapse of time from the date of the end of change in land use operation is acceptable, but there is a serious objection to a part of the decision in which it considers that crime as an instantaneous offence. One of the most important grounds for this objection is the lack of attention of the said decision to the examples of change in land use, which is common in custom and is foreseen in the regulations. Cases of change in land use are actions that cannot be carried out instantly and require a period of time no matter how short. In this article, while providing a definition of the types of crimes in terms of the time of their duraton, different points of view regarding the application of the crime of making change in land use - the subject of the binding precedent of the Supreme Court – are raised and discussed in regard to each of these crimes. In sum, it can be said that the crime of change in land use is a continuous and occurs over time, and from the date of discontinuity (the end of changing land use operation) is subject to lapse of time