Country of origin information report Turkey March 2007

[2a] [5a] [5c] [7a] [23r] [32b] [48] [65]
Hizbullah Vahdet

Radical Islamic group, which centred on the Vahdet publisher in the 1980s. The group’s leader is Abdulvahap Ekinci. The group’s legal foundations are Davet Education and Culture Association and Abdulkadir Geylani Trust. The group publishes a periodical called “Vahdet”. [65]

HÖP See DHKP-C
IBDA-C (Islamic Great East Raiders - Front) (Islami Büyük Doğu Akincilar Cephesi)

Illegal Iranian-backed fundamentalist group which seeks the establishment of an Islamic republic based on strict Shariah or religious law. It attacks the PKK as well as the Turkish establishment.

IBDA-C is reportedly organised in small, isolated cells. Members organise independently without any hierarchical authority. Usually each cell does not have information about another cell’s actions. There are two different types of cell. One type carries out propagandist actions, publishing books and periodicals, and organising meetings, conferences or exhibitions. The other type includes such cells as “Ultra Force”, “Altinordu”, “Lazistan”, and “Union of Revolutionist Sufis”. IBDA-C is active in publication, and has many bookstores, websites and print-houses. Meetings are held in bookstores. Some of its periodicals are “Ak-Doguş”, Ak-Zuhur”, Akin Yolu”, “Taraf”, and “Tahkim”. IBDA-C has been linked with a number of terrorist attacks, especially in the early 1990s. It frequently makes use of explosives and Molotov cocktails in its attacks, and has often targeted banks, casinos, Christian churches and Atatürk monuments. IBDA/C has been linked with the fatal bomb attack in October 1999 on a secular professor, Ahmet Taner Kişlali, who was best known as a journalist for the Cumhuriyet newspaper. In December 1999 and February 2000 IBDA/C members sparked off bloody clashes in Metris prison when they attempted, by armed force, to prevent guards from entering their cell. In the December riot, 54 soldiers were injured and 100 hostages taken by IBDA/C, which also laid claim to the fatal attack on two police officers in Istanbul on 1 April 2001. Proceedings were brought against IBDA/C’s leader, Salih Izzet Erdiş, known by the nom de guerre Salih Mirzabeyoğlu, before Istanbul State Security Court in February 2000, seeking to have the death penalty imposed on him for leadership of an illegal organisation working for the establishment of an Islamic state. On 3 April 2001 he was sentenced to death by that court. [2a] [48] [34] [65]