Activities

Since the late 1980s, the group has targeted primarily current and retired Turkish security and military officials. It began a new campaign against foreign interests in 1990, which included attacks against U.S. military and diplomatic personnel and facilities.

To protest what it describes as US imperialism during the Gulf war, the DHKP/C assassinated two U.S. military personnel, wounded an Air Force officer and bombed more than 20 U.S. and NATO military, commercial and cultural facilities.

In its first significant act as DHKP/C on January 9, 1996, it assassinated Özdemir Sabancı, a prominent Turkish businessman, and two others: an associate Haluk Görgün and a secretary Nilgün Hasefe. The murders were carried out by hired assassins who had been given access to the Sabanci Towers by a member, the student Fehriye Erdal, working there at that time. DHKP/C later claimed responsibility for the act.

The DHKP/C has not only targeted Turks. On August 13th 1991 it turned its attention to foreign businessmen, with the murder of Andrew Blake, the head of British Commercial Union in Istanbul.

DHKP/C added suicide bombings to its operations in 2001, with attacks against Turkish police in January and September of that year.

Security operations in Turkey and elsewhere have weakened the group, however. DHKP/C did not conduct any major attacks in 2003, although a DHKP/C female suicide bomber Sengul Akkurt's explosive belt detonated by accident on May 20, 2003 in Ankara, in a restroom, while she was preparing for an action.

On July 24, 2004, another mistaken detonation, on a bus in Istanbul, occurred, killing Semiran Polat of DHKP/C and three more people and injuring 15 others.

On July 1, 2005, Eyüp Beyaz of DHKP/C was killed in Ankara in an attempted suicide bombing attack on the ministry of justice.

In late February 2006, female member Fehriye Erdal was convicted in Belgium, while under house arrest.[citation needed] However, shortly before her conviction she escaped and still hasn't been found.

On April 29, 2009, Didem Akman of DHKP/C was wounded in her attempt to assassinate Hikmet Sami Türk at Bilkent University right before a lecture in Constitution Law. Akman and her accomplice S. Onur Yılmaz were caught[1].