Deniz Gezmiş (27 February 1947 – 6 May 1972) was a Turkish Marxist-Leninist revolutionary, student leader, and political activist in Turkey in the late 1960s. He was one of the founding members of the People's Liberation Army of Turkey (THKO). Ethnically Kurdish, he was born to an inspector of primary education and syndicalist Cemil Gezmiş and a primary school teacher Mukaddes Gezmiş. He was educated in various Turkish cities. He spent most of his childhood in Sivas, where his father grew up. He graduated from high school in Istanbul where he first encountered left wing ideas. Gezmiş and companions are considered by some as "Turkey's Ché Guevara and compañeros". Political life After joining the Workers Party of Turkey (), he studied law at Istanbul University in 1966. In the summer of 1968, he and around 15 other students founded the Revolutionary Student Union (). He also founded the Revolutionary Jurists Organisation (). Gezmiş became increasingly politically active, established the Revolutionary Jurists Association in January 1966 and was involved into the student-organised occupation of Istanbul University in June 1968. After the occupation was forcibly subdued, he spearheaded protests against the arrival of the US 6th Fleet in Istanbul, when several US soldiers were harmed and pushed into the sea on 17 July 1968. Deniz Gezmiş was arrested for these actions on 30 July 1968, and released on 20 October of the same year. As he increased his involvement with the Worker's Party of Turkey, and began to advocate for a National Democratic Revolution, his ideas started to circulate and inspire a growing revolutionary student base. On 28 November 1968, he was arrested again after protesting US ambassador Robert Komer's visit to Turkey, but was later released. On 16 March 1969 he was arrested again for participating in right-wing and left-wing armed conflicts and imprisoned until 3 April. Gezmiş was re-arrested after leading Istanbul University Law Faculty students on a protest of the reformation bill on 31 May 1969. The university was temporarily closed, and Gezmiş was injured in the conflict. Although Gezmiş was under surveillance, he escaped from hospital and went to Palestine Liberation Organization camps in Jordan to receive guerrilla training. In 1969, Gezmiş led a group of students who "violently disrupted" a lecture American scholar Daniel Lerner was to give at Istanbul University. During the 1960s, Gezmiş crossed paths with the infamous American Soviet/Russian CIA mole Aldrich Ames. While