Can anyone tell me what DHKP-C and Dev-Sol are? I´m curious to know because last Monday a leader of these organisations, Dursun Karatas, was found dead in a house in a southern town of the Netherlands. According to Dutch news Turkey and the United States claim that he and that organisation are/were terrorist and ultra-left wing. Belgium refused last February to hand him over to Turkish authority.

On the TV, they said he died in an hospital because of cancer.

dursun karataş

dursun karataş

He was found dead in a house in Etten-Leur, in the south of the Netherlands. They say is death had a natural cause, cancer was not mentioned.

A brief info:
DHKP-C was originally formed by Mahir Cayan in the begining of 1970s and stands for Turkish People´s Liberation Party-Front.
After Mahir Cayan´s death a new youth group was formed as Dev-Genc (Revolutionary Youth Federation) which mainly had a Marxist-Leninist ideology.
In 1978, Dursun Karatas formed a new group called Dev-Sol ( Revolutionary Left) by accusing the main leadership being ´not active enough´.

It was a power struggle between istanbul and ankara and he was the leader of dev-genc´s Istanbul branch.
And then, Dev-Sol went after high profile targets including ex prime minister Nihat Erim.

Karatas was jailed in 1980 and escaped in 1989. He ascaped a couple of armed attempts to catch him in 1991 and in 1992 and went abroad.
Since then, he was the ´Carlos the Jackal´ of Turkey.

(The remaining Dev-Genc become Dev-Yol -Revolutionary Path- and left the armed struggle later on. Now they are in parliment with one MP)

some wiki links:

dev-sol

karatas

more:

I have looked at a few forums in Turkish and amazingly some still regard him as a mytical, elusive character!!

His death seems to be a hot topic!