Police Special Operation Department

Polis Özel Harekât Dairesi
Active	1983[1] - present.
Country	Turkey
Branch	General Directorate of Security
Type	Special forces
Role	Domestic Counter-Terrorism and Law Enforcement
Size	Varies
Part of	Respective municipality-level police departments
Commanders
Current commander	Turan Aksoy

Police Special Operation Team personnel on a deployment at Afghanistan.

Police Special Operations Department (Turkish: Polis Özel Harekât Dairesi) or Police Special Action^[2] (Turkish: Polis Özel Harekât) shortly as PÖH is the special response unit of the General Directorate of Security.

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.^[3]

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:

• Run the 2500m designated area with a backpack weighing 10 kg, under 15 minutes
• Have 50% minimum accuracy in pistol and rifle shooting
• Swim 150 m without stopping
• Be between ages 18 and 32
• Be graduated from police high school or university

After 16 weeks of training, the applicant will get a certificate which officially names him as an operative of PÖH.^[4]

Also there is a training simulation called TAKSİS being conducted by TÜBİTAK.^[5]

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.

Equipment

Handguns

• Yavuz 16
• Steyr M
• Sig Sauer P226
• Glock 17

Shotguns

• Akdal MKA 1919^[6]

Submachine guns

• Heckler & Koch MP5^[7]
• IMI Uzi^[8]

Sniper Rifles

• SSG08^[9]
• Arctic Warfare Police

Assault Rifles

• M4A1
• HK 416
• SIG SG 516^[10]
• Steyr AUG^[11]

Machine Guns

• FN Minimi

Vehicles

• Otokar Akrep^[12]
• Otokar Cobra
• Nurol Ejder 4x4
• Bmc Kirpi

Sources