 With his friends, he contacted Deniz Gezmiş and Mahir Çayan, who were at the time leaders of the youth movement amassing popular support.The ideas of MDD quickly gained prominence among the leftist youth movement; it became the main theoretical framework for most of the leftist groups that flourished in Turkey in that period and played a key role in the '68 movement in Turkey, giving it a Marxist and revolutionary characteristic.Mihri Belli left Turkey after the 1971 military coup to avoid arrest, and was for a while a guest of the Palestinian Liberation Organization.