Our subject is the distinction of that thin line between probable intent and conscious negligence, which is one of the issues that attracts the attention of almost every interested person at almost every step, starting from being a student in the legal community and moving towards the upper echelons, sometimes in the cases they hear, read and sometimes in the cases they witnessed one-on-one and wonder if it should have been like this.

First of all, while discussing the differences between the terms probable intent and conscious negligence, the elements of foresight (knowing) and volition come into question. Therefore, it would be more accurate to prioritize to explain these two terms. The variable of foresight (knowing) refers to knowing the situation in the relevant event, foreseeing and knowing what the consequences will be. The perpetrator must think and foresee his/her action. For example, a driver who sees students coming out of a school should foresee that he/she may not reduce his/her speed and hit one of the children at high speed. As for the element of intention, this is the starting point of the whole article. In fact, it is the element that led to the writing of this article today and caused this line to be so thin and ambiguous. The element of intention refers to the desire for the consequences that will occur in the relevant event. Now, if we need to explain probable intent, probable intent is the perpetrator's foreseeing the consequences of the relevant event, that is, the perpetrator knows the consequences that will be caused by his/her actions and relatively wants them, this willingness is not as sharp as in direct intent, the perpetrator rather says “let it happen”, there is acceptance even if he/she does not want the consequences. We also need to know that the consequences should in fact be foreseeable by everyone. Therefore, if the results that occur in the relevant event are a result that a normal person cannot foresee and that would constitute a conflict with the ordinary course of life, there will be no mention of intent-negligence.Since this would constitute the subject of another article by entering the boundaries of another term, it would be better not to deviate from the subject of our article by mentioning them now. As for conscious negligence, there is the element of foresight (knowing), but there is no will, the perpetrator does not want the consequences that may occur in any way and we cannot talk about acceptance. The perpetrator relies on his/her skill or experience in the matter. In short, the main distinction is in the element of volition, which is where the difference between probable intent and conscious negligence comes from, that is, the element of anticipation is common, but when it comes to volition, the paths diverge. To give an example of conscious negligence, let's start from the same example again, the driver drives the car faster than it should be and again sees the students coming out of the school on the opposite side, but does not see the need to reduce his speed because he trusts that he can maneuver if necessary, that he can slow down, in short, he trusts his skills in driving a car and hits one of the children. In such a situation, we cannot say that the driver wanted to, he didn't want to, he just trusted in his abilities. Therefore, we should talk about conscious negligence, not probable intent.

To summarize, in conscious negligence, the perpetrator says to himself/herself “No, nothing will happen”; whereas in probable intent, the perpetrator says “No, it may not happen, but if it happens, so be it”.

 To give another example, in probable intent, the perpetrator says “he didn't deserve it, but if he dies, let him die”, while in conscious negligence, the perpetrator says “I'll manage, nothing will happen”.

To reinforce our subject with the decisions of the Court of Cassation:

The Criminal General Assembly of the Court of Cassation, in its decision dated 06.06.2017 and numbered 2017/108 E. and 2017/311 K, As in the other decisions we will include, he firstly explained the concepts of intent, probable intent, conscious negligence and negligence, referred to the distinctive criteria between probable intent and conscious negligence and stated that the defendant, while traveling on the ring road with the LPG tanker under his direction and management, when he came to the light-controlled intersection, although the red light was on in his direction of travel, he tried to cross the intersection by taking advantage of the fact that the intersection was still empty, but since the vehicles in his direction had a green light, The court analyzed the incident in which the defendant violated the rule of stopping at a red light, which is one of the most basic traffic rules, and caused injuries to both participants by hitting the right side of the vehicle in which the participants were located, despite the 19-meter-long brake track that started before the point of impact as stated in the accident report.

Before the defendant approached the intersection, the red light turned on, the vehicles in the direction of the defendant stopped, the defendant thought that he could pass through the intersection despite the red light, but the participants were present he saw the vehicle entering the intersection and applied the brakes, but caused a traffic accident resulting in injuries to those involved olup, The fact that he hit the brakes at the last moment shows the undesirability of the foreseen and realized result and the effort to prevent it, which is the essence of conscious negligence and the most important principle that distinguishes conscious negligence from probable intent. In this framework, in the concrete case where the defendant foresaw the result, but did not want this foreseen result and even made an effort to prevent the result from occurring, the Criminal General Assembly of the Court of Cassation concluded that the defendant, who tried to pass through the empty intersection despite seeing that the red light was on for the vehicles in his direction while coming to the intersection equipped with lighted signaling devices, was fully negligent and there was no doubt that he acted with conscious negligence, since he should have foreseen the result, and did not agree with the opinion of the 1st Criminal Chamber of the Court of Cassation that a conviction should be made for the crime of injury with probable intent. The General Assembly took the fact that the perpetrator braked from the moment he realized the participants until the last moment as the decisive finding in the acceptance that probable intent was not present in the concrete case.