Türkiye is commemorating the anniversary of a terrorist attack by the so-called Armenian Secret Army for the Liberation of Armenia (ASALA) that left nine dead and 72 others injured in the capital Ankara’s Esenboğa Airport, 41 years ago.

The deadly attack, ASALA’s first of several in Türkiye, was carried out by Zohrab Sarkissian and Levon Ekmekjian on Aug. 7, 1982, when both men detonated a bomb in the middle of the crowded check-in area at Ankara’s international airport and then opened fire with submachine guns on passport-control officers and passengers.

The gunmen then fled into the cafeteria, where they took 20 people hostage. Security forces rushed into the cafeteria, killing Sarkissian and wounding Ekmekjian, who was later put on trial and sentenced to death in 1983.

In 2016, Türkiye transferred the body of Emekjian, a Lebanese Armenian, to France upon an appeal to the Turkish Interior Ministry from his family, who wanted the body to have a religious burial there.

ASALA carried out a string of deadly attacks in the 1970s and 1980s.

According to data compiled by Anadolu Agency (AA), a total of 77 people – 58 of them Turkish citizens, including 31 diplomats and members of their families – were killed in attacks from 1973 to 1986 carried out by terrorist groups ASALA, the Justice Commandos of the "Armenian Genocide" (JCAG) and the Armenian Revolutionary Army (ARA).

The deadly campaign began in 1973 with the assassination of Türkiye’s Consul General in Los Angeles, Mehmet Baydar, and diplomat Bahadır Demir by a terrorist named Gourgen Yanikian.

ASALA was the first Armenian terrorist group to target Türkiye. It not only terrorized Türkiye but also other countries and it became notorious for a 1975 bomb attack on the World Council of Churches’ Beirut office. Meanwhile, the nationalistic JCAG has only targeted Türkiye because it believed that attacking other countries would damage the so-called Armenian struggle.

JCAG initially gained notoriety after claiming responsibility, along with ASALA, for the Oct. 22, 1975, assassination of Danis Tunalıgil, Türkiye’s ambassador in Vienna.

The ARA is believed to be a continuation of JCAG under a different name.

Founded in 1975 in Beirut, Lebanon, during the Lebanese Civil War, ASALA is responsible for hundreds of bloody terrorist acts.

Armenian terrorist attacks intensified from 1980 to 1983 when 580 of the 699 attacks – over 80% – occurred. The attack at Esenboğa Airport was one of the most bloody by ASALA, as the group targeted civilians for the first time.

The 1981 and 1983 Paris attacks are among the group’s other blood-thirsty 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.