Originally established in 1978 as Devrimci Sol (or Dev Sol, meaning "Revolutionary Way"), the Revolutionary People's Liberation Party/Front (RPLP/F) grew as a splinter faction of the extremist Turkish People's Liberation Party. It started off as a national political organization but turned into a formidable regional group of terror. Notwithstanding its small size and limited geographic activities, Dev Sol continues to pose a terrorist threat to American interests and assets abroad.
The RPLP/F bases its political ideology on anti-Western Marxist socialism, and has the goal of liberating Turkey from Western influence as an independent socialist country. It is also anti-American, and opposes the ongoing U.S.-led war in Afghanistan and what it terms "American imperialism." The RPLP/F is also anti-NATO characteristic, and opposes ongoing Western efforts to try former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic in The Hague.
In pursuit of its objectives, the RPLP/F has initially focused its attacks on Turkish national security and military assets. It areas of its operation have been scattered but limited mainly to within Turkey primarily places such as Istanbul, Ankara, Izmir and Adana. Advocating resistance against the West, the RPLP/F claims to maintain a "democratic" struggle in Europe by keeping solidarity with European Turks in an attempt to maintain their culture.
The RPLP/F has been a continuous source of fear in Turkey. Soon after the group's establishment, the RPLP/F leadership suffered from a series of arrests. Beginning in 1981 and lasting until 1983, these arrests decentralized the organization for a time, curtailing their activities. However, by the late 1980s, the RPLP/F had recovered sufficiently to intensify its terrorist campaign. In 1989, three simultaneous bombings carried out against American economic assets. The attacks on the Turkish American Businessmen's Association, the Economic Development Foundation, and the Metal Employees Union in Ankara, were all blamed on the RPLP/F. Moreover, in 1990, the group claimed responsibility for assassinating a former deputy director of the Turkish National Intelligence Agency in Istanbul.
It was during this period that the RPLP/F began systematically targeting foreign assets. It protested the 1991 Gulf War and responded by murdering two U.S. Defense Department contractors in February that year. In the same month, two RPLP/F members shot and injured a U.S. Air Force officer in Izmir. Later in the same year, the RPLP/F claimed responsibility for killing a British businessman in Istanbul. The group also launched rocket attacks at the U.S. Consulate in Istanbul in 1992, although there were no casualties.
Soon after this attack, the RPLP/F found itself with internal disorganization. In 1993, it split into two rival groups — the Karatas and the Yagan wing — named after Dursun Karatas and Bedri Yagan respectively. The Yagan wing has assumed the name Devrimci Sol, something that has further antagonized the Karatas faction, who maintain that they are the rightful heirs of the RPLP/F's original title. For the main part the THKP/C tends to be referred to as Dev Sol. This faction maintains its command headquarters in Germany, although it has not carried out any major terror attacks in the country.
This series of intense internal feuding has reduced the overall size as well as solidarity of Dev Sol to several hundred extremists. But still, early in 1996, the Yagan faction managed to kill two Turkish businessmen and a secretary in Istanbul, to avenge the deaths of three associates at Istanbul's Umraniye prison. By 1998, this faction claimed that it had carried out a total of 1,000 operations such as "massacres, murders, disappearances, acts of sabotage, and provocations."
The Yagan group's last terrorist activity was recorded in January 2001, when it allegedly detonated a homemade pipe bomb and injured 10 in Istanbul crowds during the New Years celebration. The attack was reported to have been orchestrated in revenge for the death of collaborators killed in prisons in the country.
Despite its internal split, Dev Sol as a whole remains an ongoing terrorist threat. Although the geography and intensity of its terrorist activities are limited, it continues to threaten Western national security interests within Turkey. With U.S.-led military action against Iraq increasingly imminent, this could complicate any effort to conduct any attacks from Turkey. In such a scenario, the possibility that Dev Sol will once again target Americans is one which cannot be ruled out. As such, security at U.S. installations within Turkish territory should be upgraded accordingly.
Sources
U.S. Department of State, Patterns of Global Terrorism 2001
International Policy Institute for Counter-terrorism, Revolutionary People's Liberation Party/Front (DHCP/F) Attacks from 1988 - The Present
Revolutionary People's Liberation Party/Front
Nadir Aktuell, Devrimci Sol
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