Ankara Esenboğa Airport attack

The attack was carried out by Zohrab Sarkissian and Levon Ekmekjian (Ekmekdjian, Ekmekçiyan), who detonated a bomb in the middle of the crowded check-in area at Ankara's Esenboğa Airport, and then opened fire with submachine guns on passport control officers and passengers queuing for a KLM flight.

The ASALA statement said that the responsibility for "the innocent victims" of the Ankara airport attack was "on the shoulders of the enemies of peaceful peoples: the Turkish Government, NATO and the United States."

[7] While in prison, Ekmekjian wrote a letter, in which he expressed his remorse about killing innocent people and admonished other ASALA members to give up violence.

[12] In 2013, Hampartsum Ekmekjian, the executed attacker's brother, presented a request to the Turkish authorities to allow the release of Levon's body as the family desired a Christian religious burial for him.

The unmarked location of the corpse in Ankara's Cebeci cemetery was confirmed and the body was then exhumed and sent by air to France for reburial 33 years after his execution.

[14] President Kenan Evren issued a decree for the elimination of ASALA, while Prime Minister Bülend Ulusu condemned the attack.

[citation needed] Artin Penik, a Turkish Armenian, fatally set himself on fire in protest at this attack on 10 August 1982 in Taksim Square, Istanbul.