Attack on the Turkish embassy in Lisbon

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The attack on the Turkish embassy in Lisbon was a terrorist attack by the Armenian underground organization Asala on the diplomatic mission of Turkey in the Portuguese capital, Lisbon , in which seven people were killed on July 27, 1983.

Course of events

On the morning of July 27, 1983, at around 10:25 a.m., a five-man commando from the Armenian Secret Army for the liberation of Armenia drove up in two cars loaded with explosives in front of the Turkish embassy in the Lisbon district of Restelo and stormed the building. They threatened to blow up the embassy. The background to the attack was the refusal of the Turkish government to recognize the genocide of the Armenians during the First World War.

The Portuguese Prime Minister Mário Soares convened the crisis cabinet . Around 1 p.m., the situation worsened when several explosions shook the building. Soares ordered the storming by the Portuguese special unit Grupo de Operações Especiais (GOE), which came here for its first mission. Inside, she found the bodies of the five assassins, those of Cahide Mıhçıoğlu, the wife of the Turkish business agent, as well as those of a Portuguese policeman who tried to break into the building. Chargé d'affaires Yurtsev Mıhçıoğlu and his 17-year-old son were injured.

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