Terrorist Organization Profile:
DHKP/C

In the early 1990s, infighting within Dev Sol resulted in the emergence of two factions. Dursun Karatas, who founded Dev Sol by combining splintered factions of Turkish radical leftist groups in 1978, changed the group's name to DHKP/C in 1994. Bedri Yagan, also a founding member of Dev Sol, broke from the Karatas faction and created a new faction, THKP/C (not to be confused with the original THKP/C). Confusingly, the Yagan faction of DHKP/C is still often referred to as Dev Sol.

DHKP/C's ideology is similar to that of other radical Turkish leftists. The group believes that the Turkish government is a fascist regime, controlled by the domineering, imperialist forces of the West, especially the United States and NATO. The group seeks to destroy these Western influences through violence and Marxist revolution. In its early years, when it was still known as Dev Sol, the group focused largely on political assassinations. A crackdown by Turkish authorities in the early 1980s forced the group to restrict its activities, though in the late 1980s Dev Sol was able to increase its attacks against Turkish military targets.

Learn more about these U.S. Department of State classifications:

Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTOs)

Terrorist Exclusion List (TEL)