Police Special Operation Department


Police Special Operations Department or Police Special Action 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", 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 " 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". 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 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