Historical Dictionary of Terrorism Third Edition

678 • TURKISH PEOPLE’S LIBERATION FRONTstationed at North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) bases withinTurkey and assassinations of right-wing Turks, as well as bank robberiesand bombings of right-wing and U.S. targets. The group wasfounded in 1968 or shortly thereafter by five leftist students fromthe Middle East Technical University in Ankara, who underwentguerrilla training in al Fatah camps within Jordan and Lebanon andwho also established contacts with leftist army officers and cadets.Following the abduction of four U.S. servicemen on 4 March 1971,later released unharmed, about 18 members of the TPLA, includingits leader, Deniz Gezmiş, were arrested.Gezmiş was executed along with two comrades on 6 May 1972,but when a general amnesty in 1974 led to the release of the rest ofhis colleagues, they reactivated the organization. The TPLA membersexpanded their ranks by recruiting from leftist university students inAnkara and Istanbul, who then received training and arms from Sovietbloccountries. By 1977 TPLA assassinations against perceived rightwingtargets had claimed up to 260 lives. In 1979 around 2,000 peoplewere killed due to death squad activities of the TPLA, other leftistgroups, and opposing right-wing groups. The military crackdown on12 September 1980 led to the suppression of most activities of theTPLA. Its last known attack was on 15 November 1980, in which itassassinated a U.S. Air Force sergeant outside a NATO military base.After this last known attack the TPLA ceased to be active.Disagreements within the TPLA led to the splitting off in 1975 of afaction, known as Dev Yol, or the Revolutionary Road, which did notengage in terrorism or violence. In 1978 a split emerged in Dev Yol,leading to the creation of Dev Sol, or Revolutionary Left, now knownas the Revolutionary People’s Liberation Party/Front, which actedmainly as an antirightist death squad in the environs of Ankara andwhich was one of the few leftist terrorist groups in Turkey that survivedthe crackdown of 1980, making a comeback in the late 1980s.TURKISH PEOPLE’S LIBERATION FRONT (TPLF). The TürkiyeHalk Kurtulus Partisi ve Cephesi was the armed wing of theTurkish People’s Liberation Party. Like the Turkish People’s LiberationArmy, with which it had no direct connection, the TPLFsought to overturn the constitutional democracy in Turkey in favor ofa Marxist-Leninist state, and its members also received training in alFatah camps as well as covert Soviet-bloc support. On 17 May 1971