ABSTRACT Objective MicroRNAs are small endogenous, non-coding, single-stranded posttranscriptional RNA molecules. The discovery of microRNAs has made new contributions to cancer diagnosis and treatment. These microRNAs reported as a responsible for colorectal cancer development with several epigenetic changes. In this study, it was aimed to evaluate the relationship between the polymorphism of miR-196a-2 polymorphism rs11614913 and colorectal cancer in Turkish population. Methods Two hundred colorectal cancer patient (124 colon cancer and 76 rectal cancer) and 240 health control individuals were included in our study, which was planned as a hospital based retrospective cohort study. MiR-196a2 polymorphism in peripheral blood samples has been determined by polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP) method. Significance of the results has been evaluated by using SPSS (20.0 SPSS Inc., Chicago, IL, USA.) statistical program. Results miR-196a2 C / C + C / T genotypes was found to be associated with the risk of colorectal cancer development (p: 0.001; OR: 2.04, 95% CI: 1.293-3.236). The subgroup analysis, showed that the C / C + C / T genotype increased the risk of colon cancer development 2.11 times (p: 0.016; 95% CI: 1.136-3.918) and rectal cancer 2.86 times (p: 0.011; 95% CI:1.242-6.592). The relationship between any clinicopathological features of colorectal cancer and the frequency of the C / C + C / T genotype of miR196a2 was not statistically significant (p> 0.05). Conclusion This study supports that miR-196a2's C / C + C / T genotypes is related with increased colorectal cancer development risk.