Feasibility of the Effectiveness of Restorative Responses to the Terrorist Crimes

The phenomenon of terrorism is spreading throughout the world. It has been particularly prevalent since the beginning of the last quarter of the twentieth century. A comparative study of national and transnational criminal policy regarding the phenomenon of terrorism confirms that the dominant perspective and the governing system of criminal policies in the world, whether national or transnational, are security-oriented and have antagonist policies: thus, terrorist criminals are described as "enemies of society", "dangerous criminals" and "non-rehabilitative" and are even at the forefront of dangerous criminals. Also, they are treated based on the punitive, dissuasive, and incapacitation criminal philosophy. But it seems that the antagonist criminal policy against terrorist offenders should be reversed to establish a restorative discourse with the aim of application of restorative responses. A response to terrorism crimes should not be limited to tough penal and zero-tolerance policies. In addition to these policies and measures, promoting reintegration and rehabilitation of the perpetrators for the purpose of preventing the recidivism seems to be important and necessary. The researcher tries to defend the theory of the "possibility of restoration of anti-terrorist criminal policy" with a descriptive-analytical approach and a focus on foreign law. He introduces this theory as a necessary strategy for the legislator. The author argues that policies derived from antagonist criminal law theory are promoters of terrorism and cannot and should not become the main strategy of counter-terrorism criminal policy. Rather, the appropriate criminal strategy for dealing with terrorist crimes is to design a combined criminal policy to use a combination of restorative and criminal measures, depending on the personality and status of the terrorist offenders. In this combined approach, in parallel, it is possible to apply restorative justice programs and punitive responses to terrorist offenses at the same time. And in case of failure of the restorative response and "despairing of restorative justice", the criminal process and the punitive response can be pursued.