Political violence in Turkey (1976–1980)

Political violence in Turkey became a serious problem in the late 1970s and was even described as a "low-level civil war". The death squads of Turkish right-wing ultranationalist groups, sometimes allied with the state, inflicted around 5,000 casualties with the motivation of acting against the resistance of the left-wing opposition. Most of the victims were left-wingers. The level of illegal violence lessened for a while after the 1980 Turkish coup d'état, and was later overshadowed by the PKK insurgency in 1984 and the revival of the Maoist insurgency.