The group planned attacks worldwide , though it experienced internal splintering after its 1983 Orly Airport attack incurred non-Turkish casualties . The attacks , which were routinely condemned by Armenian church leaders , as well as the international community , were famously protested by an Armenian named Artin Penik in 1982 , who self-immolated in Istanbul 's Taksim Square to demonstrate the force of his opposition to ASALA tactics . The Armenian Patriarch of Constantinople , who visited the badly burned Penik in the hospital shortly before his death , described him as " a symbol of Armenian discontent with these brutal murders . " A similar organization , Justice Commandos against the Armenian Genocide , at times known as the Armenian Revolutionary Army , was responsible for at least an additional six killings . In a particular 1983 attack on the Turkish Embassy in Lisbon , the gunmen deliberately " sacrificed " themselves by setting off a bomb in the building , such that none of them survived
1983 Orly Airport attack
1983 Orly Airport attack
Armenia–Turkey relations