Radical Leftists At The Heart Of Turkey Embassy Attack

AP

No group has yet claimed responsibility for the attack on the U.S. Embassy today in Akara, Turkey, but initial reports from the Turkish interior minister point to a prominent leftist terror group that operates within their borders.

The group responsible is the Revolutionary People's Liberation Party-Front (DHKP-C), a radical Marxist-Leninist group that has operated within Turkey since 1994, according to Interior Minister Muammer Guler.

They are designated as a foreign terrorist organization by the U.S. State Department.

They splintered from a group started in 1978 named Revolutionary Youth due to factional in-fighting. They are virulently anti-Turkey, anti-U.S., and anti-NATO and finance their operations through donations and extortion.

The organization has had many successful attacks in the past: they assassinated two military contractors and wounded a U.S. Air Force officer in 1990, launched rockets at the U.S. Consulate in Istanbul in 1992, and assassinated a prominent Turkish businessman and two others in 1996.

They added suicide bombings to their tactics in two successful attacks against Turkish police in 2001.

This post will be updated as more information comes in.