Turkey - Dev Sol (Devrimci Sol, or Revolutionary Left)

The Rocking Dev Sols are not a retro surf reverb rock group out of California, but a splinter faction of the Turkish People's Liberation Party/Front formed in 1978. They espouse a Marxist ideology and are intensely xenophobic, virulently anti-U.S. and anti-NATO. Dev Sol seeks to unify the proletariat to stage a national revolution. (Yawn.) The group finances its activities largely through armed robberies and extortion. Their symbol is a yellow star with hammer and sickle against a red background.

Dev Sol has conducted attacks against the U.S., Turkish and NATO targets but was weakened by massive arrests from 1981-83. In the early 1990s, the group killed several foreigners, including two Americans. Five members, including one of its leaders, were shot and killed in Istanbul on March 6, 1993. Dev Sol is down to several hundred hard-core radicals with several dozen armed militants. While other groups have concentrated their actions in Adana in recent years, only Dev Sol has attacked Americans. In February 1991, the group assassinated an American employee of a Department of Defense contractor outside his home in downtown Adana. The same year, the group bombed the American consulate and other U.S. affiliated organizations. Early in 1996, Dev Sol guerrillas murdered two prominent Turkish businessmen and a secretary in their offices in downtown Istanbul, to avenge the deaths of three prison inmates at Istanbul's Umraniye prison. Local state banks are a favorite target and have been bombed numerous times. Dev Sol is led by Karatas. But to be quite honest Dev Sol seem to be in semi-retirement these days, not having carried out a decent assassination for a while; and they're a bit of a bore anyway. You never know, maybe they've just heard about glasnost!