Ecevit Şanlı

Ecevit Şanlı (* 1973 , † February 1, 2013 in Ankara ) was a Turkish terrorist who carried out the suicide attack on the US embassy in Ankara on February 1, 2013.

Şanlı belonged to the Turkish terrorist group DHKP-C . He blew himself up in front of the US embassy in Ankara on February 1, 2013. He and a security guard were killed and a television journalist was injured. His real name is Ecevit Şanlı, but he was called Alışan Şanlı. He was from a rural area in Ordu Province and had six siblings, including three sisters. His father was a farmer and a shepherd. Şanlı attended elementary school, did his military service and then went to Istanbul, where he later joined the organization.

After the attack, it became known that the suicide bomber had lived in Germany for a long time.

The suicide bomber was convicted of "terrorism" after he was involved in attacks on an officers' mess and police facility in Istanbul in 1997. He was arrested in Turkey and, according to information from Milliyet and Vatan newspapers, took part in the "death fast" in 2000 . These hunger strikes were violently ended by the intervention of the police. He was given exemption from custody and traveled to Germany illegally and asked for political asylum. According to information from Südwestrundfunk (SWR), his asylum application was rejected at the end of 2011 . The authorities justified this with the fact that he was not a victim of political persecution. It was known that he was committed to the left-wing extremist group Revolutionary People's Liberation Party Front . Şanlı had stayed in North Rhine-Westphalia. The German Federal Criminal Police Office is said to have investigated the man during and after the asylum procedure . The investigation is said to have been about the suspicion of membership or support of the Turkish DHKP-C. The terrorist organization follows a Marxist-Leninist ideology . After his asylum application was rejected, the authorities advised him to leave the country. Then he went into hiding. He entered Turkey with forged papers and blew himself up in front of the US embassy on February 1, 2013 as a martyr .

On its website Halkinsesi.tv (voice of the people) , the DHKC published two photos of the assassin over the weekend. According to Turkish media reports, he was said to have suffered from Wernicke-Korsakov syndrome as a result of the hunger strike due to severe malnutrition . Milliyet and Vatan reported that he was chosen for the assassination attempt because "his days were numbered" . As the newspaper Radikal explained, the underground group DHKP-C repeatedly uses terminally ill members for their (suicide) attacks.

In Germany, he was not previously monitored by security services because he was not classified as a so-called " threat ". The Federal Prosecutor General would have been responsible in Germany for a possible investigation against the now dead assassin . A spokesman for the authority told the SWR on February 3, 2013 that he could not comment on this question at the moment, as the identity of the attacker had not yet been clarified beyond doubt for the federal prosecutor's office.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Turkey: US Embassy bomber Ecevit Sanli had been imprisoned for terror ties (English)
2. ↑ http://www.tagesschau.de/ausland/ermittlungen-botschaftsanschlag100.html ( Memento from February 3, 2013 in the Internet Archive )
3. ↑ FAZ.NET: Left-wing extremists accuse themselves of attacking the embassy. In: FAZ.net . February 3, 2013, accessed October 13, 2018 . 
4. ↑ http://www.stern.de/news2/aktuell/attentaeter-von-ankara-offenbar-ex-hungerstreikaktivist-1965033.html  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.