Poverty grows, violence explodes

The murder of 17-year-old Atlas Çağlayan in the heart of Istanbul and 23-year-old Gözde Akbaba in the middle of a public space in Menemen, İzmir, painfully reveals that violence in this country has become "ordinary," while negligence has become institutionalized. At the same time, such acts of violence should be evaluated not as individual deviations, but as the product of a social climate where violence and death are increasingly normalized.

Official statistics and field data indicate that the increase in crime and violence cases is not linear but follows an increasingly accelerating—almost geometric—course. The fact that a significant portion of the more than 100 thousand people currently in penal institutions consists of children, adolescents, and young people shows that the problem is not only judicial but also related to a deep social, psychological, and structural crisis. This picture suggests that violence cannot be explained by individual pathologies; on the contrary, it should be addressed as a systematic result of the experiences of insecurity, exclusion, and worthlessness that surround younger generations.

The deepening economic crisis in Turkey, the spread of urban poverty, and the gradual weakening of the material foundations of the family institution have dragged children and young people into a multi-layered environment of insecurity. This structural fragility not only makes living conditions difficult but also produces the sociological ground for a social climate where violence is normalized.

While current data reveal that millions of children cannot access adequate nutrition, housing, and basic social services, it also shows that the childhood experience is increasingly and sharply differentiated along class lines. For children growing up under these unequal and insecure conditions, the risk is not limited to poverty; the probability of being dragged into crime, encountering violence, or becoming a perpetrator of violence also increases. In this context, the observed increase in crime and violence among children and young people should be read as a reflection of the structural inequalities and social disintegration surrounding them, rather than individual choices.

The dilapidated neighborhoods in large cities receiving migration are not areas where crime is "naturally" produced; they are sounding the alarm as "criminogenic" (crime-producing) contexts where structural inequalities are concentrated. Although vulnerable groups such as Roma and refugees become more visible in these spaces, the source of crime is not cultural differences, but class domination, spatial exclusion, and state practices that prioritize punishment instead of protective social policies.

‘Digital’ and ‘virtual’ channels are no longer a secondary area in children being dragged into crime; they have become a new and unregulated front in their own right. Gaming content that normalizes violence, systematic cyberbullying, and propaganda centered on "power, money, and visibility" conducted by criminal networks on social media are rapidly destroying children's world of perception. For children cut off from school, public protection, and social support, the digital space offers an alternative socialization universe that romanticizes crime.

The risk faced today is far beyond individual digital habits: Digital gang formation is spreading silently but rapidly. Gaming platforms and closed messaging groups are turning into invisible but effective criminal networks where children are step-by-step directed toward illegal activities. This picture shows that children are under a serious and urgent threat not only on the street but also behind the screen, and points to a red alert situation that requires immediate public intervention.

There are serious institutional disconnects in the early detection and inclusion of at-risk children—those who drop out of school, those experiencing attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder, those with a history of crime in their family, or those growing up under the pressure of poverty and migration—into protective social systems. As emphasized in Merton's anomie theory, this situation deepens the rupture between social goals and the legitimate means of achieving them, directing children and young people toward alternative, and often illegal, forms of adaptation.

On the other hand, the widespread perception of impunity functions to encourage rather than deter crime. As pointed out by Becker's labeling theory, the selective, delayed, or inconsistent operation of the justice system leads children to internalize the "criminal" identity and makes this identity permanent. The fact that the justice mechanism operates primarily as punitive rather than restorative renders the opportunities for reintegration into society offered by Braithwaite's restorative justice approach largely ineffective.

In this context, the recurring cycle of crime among children should be explained not by individual moral failings, but by the inadequacy of protective social policies, the exclusionary nature of schools, and the weak restorative capacity of the justice system. In this social plane where violence and crime are normalized, children are both pushed into risk by the system's negligence and punished solely by the same system.

The significant drop in the age of starting drug use in recent years leaves children facing not only a health risk but a multi-layered threat that pushes them directly into the center of criminal networks. Official reports and field research indicate that substance use has now descended to middle school ages, and that contact with drugs constitutes a decisive threshold in a significant portion of cases involving children dragged into crime.

For children growing up in poverty, school dropout, and insecurity, drugs are not just a consumed substance; they often become a gateway to crime. While children are directed toward crimes such as theft and robbery to obtain these substances, they are also used as "carriers" or "couriers" by drug networks. The fact that gangs consciously exploit the relatively light legal sanctions for children as a legal loophole accelerates the criminalization of childhood.

When this picture is combined with the previously mentioned perception of impunity and the failure of restorative justice mechanisms, it turns drugs from an individual addiction problem into part of a structural crime economy. Today, substance addiction has acquired the character of a global social epidemic that erodes not only individuals but also childhood, the family, and public protection systems. The fact that children have become both victims and tools in this epidemic shows that the problem is not moral, but clearly a political and structural crisis.