"We remember with respect Ambassador Ismail Erez and his driver Talip Yener, martyred in a heinous attack by the Armenian terrorist organizations ASALA and JCAG in Paris on Oct. 24, 1975," the Foreign Ministry said on Twitter.
Over the decades, Armenian terrorist groups, including JCAG, ASALA and the Armenian Revolutionary Army (ARA), carried out numerous 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, ASALA is responsible for hundreds of bloody terrorist acts. 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.
JCAG initially gained notoriety after claiming responsibility with 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.”
ARA is considered a continuation of 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 infamous terrorist 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.
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