History
IBDA-C was founded in 1970 by Salih Izzet Erdiş, aka Salih Mirzabeyoglu. The group moved from rhetoric to violence in the 1990s, culminating in a series of 90 bombings and attacks in 1994.
Salih Izzet Erdiş, a spiritual follower of Kısakürek, was captured on Dec. 31, 1998, and sentenced to death in April 2001 for "attempting to overthrow Turkey's secular state by force." His lawyer, Ahmet Arslan, maintained that his client was no more than "a man of thought," arguing that there was a lack of concrete evidence supporting the charges. Erdiş's death sentence was later commuted when Ankara abolished the death penalty in August 2002.
In August 2003, Erdiş claimed responsibility for his crimes and attributed his actions to "mind control", seeking help from the Forensic Medicine Institute in Turkey. But any quest Erdiş may have had for clemency was denied in March 2004, when a Turkish court issued Erdiş a 20-year prison sentence for using handmade explosives and weapons in a riot against authorities at Metris Prison.
Although Erdiş remains in prison, IBDA-C has continued its activities, being most heavily active in the Istanbul region, attacking bars, discothèques, and churches. Members of IBDA-C don't operate under any defined hierarchical structure, and carry out actions in small independent groups that are united behind their common goals and ideologies.
Read more about this topic: Great Eastern Islamic Raiders' Front
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