Active 1983 - present. Type Special forces | Country Turkey Size Varies | |
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Branch General Directorate of Security Role Domestic Counter-Terrorism and Law Enforcement | ||
Police Special Operations Department (Turkish: Polis Özel Harekât Dairesi) or Police Special Action (Turkish: Polis Özel Harekât) shortly as PÖH is the special response unit of the General Directorate of Security.
Contents
History
Founded in 1982 as "Special Action Office" (Turkish: Özel Harekat Şube Müdürlüğü), under the command of Department of Public Security, to prevent armed acts of terrorist organizations residential area or in rural areas, to rescue hostages in places like aircraft, land vehicles, ships, subways, trains, and in enclosed spaces like buildings, to ensure the safety in cities and in civil aviation airports with special skills, modern weapons, ammunition, vehicles, equipment, tactics and techniques. In bigger cities like Ankara, İstanbul and İzmir "Special Operations Group Authorities "(Turkish: Özel Harekat Grup Amirlikleri) are organized in the same year. As a result of changing conditions, in 1987, office transrred to Anti-Terrorism and Operations Department under the name of "Special Action Branch" (Turkish: Özel Harekat Şubesi). In 1993, branch promoted to a department, and got its current structuring.
İbrahim Şahin was head of the Department until forced to resign in 1996 over the Susurluk scandal. Ayhan Çarkın was a notable member of the department in the 1990s.
Training
To qualify for PÖH, an applicant must:
After 16 weeks of training, the applicant will get a certificate which officially names him as an operative of PÖH.
Also there is a training simulation called TAKSİS being conducted by TÜBİTAK.
Tactics
Unit uses automatic and special weapons and rapid deployment tactics for exceptional circumstances, such as bank robberies, kidnappings, hostage rescues, etc. The nature of the unit is quite like the American SWAT or the German GSG 9, mostly specialises in counter-terrorism (CT) operations against forces and able to take operations on many environments including buses and planes.