Devrimci Yol (Turkish for "Revolutionary Path", shortly DEV-YOL) was a Turkish political movement (as opposed to a tightly structured organization) with many supporters in trade unions and other professional institutions. Its ideology was based on Marxism-Leninism but rejected both the Soviet and the Chinese model in favor of a more native Turkish model, although it was influenced by the latter. Devrimci Yol entered the political scene in Turkey on 1 May 1977 with its manifesto called bildirge. Its roots can be seen in a movement that called itself Devrimci Gençlik ("Revolutionary Youth", short DEV-GENÇ), and it followed the thesis of Mahir Çayan.

The defence in the central trial against members of Devrimci Yol at Ankara Military Court included the following lines:

The brochure published in Hamburg in November 1980 carried the emblem of the organization (fist on top of a star) and therefore the views expressed there reflect the attitude of the organization:

In a report on the central trial against Devrimci Yol in Ankara Amnesty International wrote in June 1988:

In April 1997, the Swiss Refugee Support Organization (in German Schweizerische Flüchtlingshilfe, SFH) published a report simply called "Türkei – Turquie". The report included detailed information on many legal and illegal Turkish and Kurdish organization. On Devrimci Yol, it stated inter alia:

"The journal and supporters of Dev-Yol were not opposed to violence but tried to put into practice a defence policy centred around the idea of 'committees of resistance', which were to counter attacks against the population by right-wing militants known as the Grey Wolves." The first resistance committees (direniş komiteleri) were formed because Devrimci Yol believed that there was a civil war in Turkey. Arms were to be used in defence. One of the main goals of the committees was the establishment of cooperatives of production. In Fatsa, for instance, a hazelnut cooperative was founded.

The resistance committees (organized in factories or quarters) were put to the test during the incidents in Çorum in July 1980. Just like the conflict in Kahramanmaraş in December 1978, the clashes in Çorum seemed to emerge from religious tensions between the dominant Sunnites and the minority of Alevites, but at the same time, they were a battle between right and left wing groups for domination in the town. The committees in the quarters erected barricades trying to avoid further losses.

Although a curfew was announced and the military intervened, some 50 people were killed. While the conflict in Çorum was still continuing, Prime Minister Süleyman Demirel intervened by saying Çorum'u bırak, Fatsa'ya bak (Leave Çorum and look at Fatsa). He was referring to the district town at the Black Sea of (at the time some 20,000 inhabitants) who in 1979 had elected Fikri Sönmez, known as terzi Fikri ("Tailor Fikri") as mayor with 62% of the votes. The words of Demirel resulted in the so-called "point operation" (nokta operasyonu), a military operation that destroyed the project of self-administration in Fatsa (in German de:Selbstverwaltung in Fatsa). More than 1,000 people were detained. The military operation in Fatsa was often termed rehearsal for the coup.