Türkiye on Wednesday commemorated its citizen killed by an Armenian terrorist group in the Hague in 1979.
"We remember with respect our martyr Ahmet Benler, son of late Ambassador Özdemir Benler, assassinated in the heinous attack by the Armenian terrorist organizations such as the Armenian Secret Army for the Liberation of Armenia (ASALA) and Justice Commandos of the Armenian Genocide (JCAG) in The Hague on 12 October 1979," the Turkish Foreign Ministry said on Twitter.
Over the decades, Armenian terrorist groups, including the JCAG, the ASALA and the Armenian Revolutionary Army (ARA) carried out many assassinations of Turkish diplomats and their families around the world.
According to data compiled by Anadolu Agency (AA), a total of 77 people – 58 of them Turkish nationals, including 31 diplomats and members of their families – lost their lives in attacks carried out by these terrorist groups from 1973 to 1986.
The terror campaign started in 1973 when Türkiye's Consul General in Los Angeles Mehmet Baydar and diplomat Bahadır Demir were assassinated in an attack by a terrorist named Gourgen Yanikian.
Founded in 1975 in Beirut, Lebanon, during the Lebanese civil war, the ASALA is responsible for hundreds of bloody terrorist acts. The ASALA was the first Armenian terrorist group to launch a campaign against Türkiye. It targeted not only Türkiye but also other countries and became infamous for a 1975 bomb attack on the Beirut office of the World Council of Churches.
The JCAG initially gained notoriety after claiming responsibility with the ASALA for the Oct. 22, 1975 attack on Daniş Tunalıgil, Türkiye's ambassador in Vienna. The nationalistic JCAG believed that attacking other countries would damage the so-called “Armenian struggle.”
The ARA is considered a continuation of the JCAG under a different name.
Armenian terrorist attacks intensified from 1980 to 1983, when 580 of the 699 attacks – over 80% – occurred. The attack at Esenboğa airport in the Turkish capital Ankara on Aug. 7, 1982, was one of the most notorious attacks by ASALA, as the group targeted civilians for the first time. Nine people died and over 80 were injured when two terrorists opened fire in a crowded passenger waiting area at the airport.
The 1981 and 1983 Paris attacks are among the group's other notable acts. ASALA terrorists held 56 people hostage for 15 hours during the Turkish Consulate attack in 1981, while a suitcase bomb killed eight people – most of them non-Turks – in 1983 at a Turkish Airlines check-in desk at Paris' Orly Airport. According to some Turkish officials, after the Orly attack, the group lost much of its support and financial backing from the Armenian diaspora and had to dissolve. The terrorist attacks ended in 1986, according to an Armenian study on terrorism.
