Twelve members of the Revolutionary People’s Liberation Front (DHKP-C) were arrested in operations in Istanbul and Tunceli.

Istanbul Police Department Counter-Terrorism and Intelligence Branch Directorate teams continue their work to decipher the activities of the DHKP-C terrorist organization.

Through these works, the teams have determined that 17 suspects have links to the DHKP-C.

After the police determined their addresses and identity information, 12 were arrested in simultaneous operations in Istanbul and Tunceli. At the address, police found two unlicensed guns, a blank cartridge pistol as well as digital material. Efforts to arrest the remaining five suspects who could not be found at their address are continuing.

The group is listed as a terrorist organization by Türkiye, the U.S. and the European Union.

The terrorist group pursues a far-left ideology and has been actively carrying out attacks and assassinations in the country since the 1980s, but its campaign of violence hit a snag when faced with Türkiye’s barrage of counterterrorism operations. The DHKP-C’s most high-profile attacks include a suicide bombing that targeted the U.S. Embassy in the capital Ankara in 2013 and the killing of a prosecutor in an Istanbul courthouse in 2015.