Police Special Operation Department

Polis Özel Harekât Dairesi
Active	1974-Present
Country	Turkey
Branch	General Directorate of Security
Type	Police tactical unit
Role	Counter-terrorism Law enforcement
Size	Classified
Part of	Respective municipality-level police departments
Garrison/HQ	Ankara, Türkiye
Nickname(s)	PÖH
Mascot(s)	Eagle
Commanders
Current commander	Selami Türker
Notable commanders	Behçet Oktay

Turkish special forces police in Afghanistan. (2008)

Police Special Operations Department (Turkish: Polis Özel Harekât Dairesi) or Police Special Action (Turkish: Polis Özel Harekât) shortly as PÖH is the police tactical unit of the General Directorate of Security in Turkey. It is also deployed as part of the Turkish occupation of northern Syria.

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:

• 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.

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.

Police Special Operation Department is one of a handful of security forces in the world which employs active front line female squad members in combat operations.

Equipment

Handguns

• Yavuz 16
• Steyr M
• Sig Sauer P226
• Glock 17
• Sarsılmaz Kılınç 2000
• Canik TP9
• Beretta 92
• CZ 75

Shotguns

• Akdal MKA 1919

Submachine guns

• Heckler & Koch MP5
• IMI Uzi

Sniper rifles

• SSG08
• Arctic Warfare Police
• Accuracy International AX50
• Barrett M107
• PSL

Assault rifles

• M16A2
• M4A1
• Heckler & Koch HK416
• Heckler & Koch HK417
• SIG Sauer SIG516
• Steyr AUG
• LMT 308
• MKEK MPT-76

Machine guns

• FN Minimi
• M60 machine gun

Vehicles

• Otokar Akrep
• Otokar Cobra
• Nurol Ejder
• BMC - Kirpi