The
violence of Syria’s bloody civil war has had a shocking repercussion beyond its
borders with the assassination of Russia’s ambassador to Turkey in Ankara in
what appeared to be revenge for his country’s part in the assault on
Aleppo.
Andrey
Karlov was killed at an art gallery in Ankara by a gunman who shot him eight
times at close range. Standing over the 62-year-old diplomat’s body the
assassin, wearing a black suit and tie, was heard shouting “Don’t forget
Aleppo, don’t forget Syria. Unless our towns are secure, you won’t enjoy
security. Everyone who is involved in this will pay a price. Only death can
take me from here.”
Film
footage taken at the scene showed the killer repeatedly gesticulating with a
pistol in his hand. There had been heavy security around Mr Karlov’s presence
at the art gallery, but, according to one of the guards, the gunman had entered
by showing a police ID card and saying that he was an officer in the public
order department.
Altintas,
22, was a member of the riot police in Ankara, which enabled him to enter the
building through the use of his police ID card, according to Interior Ministry
sources.
Burhan
Ozbilici, a photographer for The Associated Press, witnessed the shooting, and wrote an account of it
for the agency.
"The
event was routine enough -- the opening of an exhibit of photographs of Russia
— and when a man on stage pulled out a gun I thought it was a theatrical
flourish," Ozbilici wrote about the incident. "It was anything but.
Moments later the Russian ambassador was sprawled on the floor and the attacker
was waving his gun at the rest of us, shouting slogans."
Altintas
was ultimately killed by the Turkish anti-terror police, the Interior Ministry
said. The ambassador was already dead by the time he arrived at the hospital,
they added.
Three
other people were injured during the incident but are said to be recovering.
Altintas'
mother and sister were taken into custody in the city of Izmir after the
shooting.
Mr
Putin, who said he personally knew the murdered envoy, said he had agreed in a
phone call with his Turkish counterpart that Russian investigators would soon
fly to Ankara to help the Turks with the investigation.
"We
must know who directed the killer's hand," Mr Putin told Mr Lavrov, Sergei
Naryshkin, the head of his SVR foreign intelligence service, and Alexander
Bortnikov, the head of the domestic FSB security service.
Mr
Putin ordered security at Turkish diplomatic facilities in Russia to be stepped
up and said he wanted guarantees from Turkey about the safety of Russian
diplomatic facilities.
"I
also ask you to implement the agreed proposals on strengthening security at
Russian diplomatic facilities abroad," Mr Putin told the meeting.
The
killing came a day before the Turkish foreign minister, Mevlut Cavusoglu, was
due in Moscow to meet Russian and Iranian ministers to discuss the war in
Syria.
There
was trepidation over what may now follow the killing. Fatih Oke, a senior
Turkish diplomat in Washington wrote on twitter “The bullet to Ambassador
Karlov is not only aimed at him, it aims also at Turkey’s relations with
Russia”.
Speaking
outside the hospital where Mr Karlov was taken after the attack, Melih Gokcek,
the mayor of Ankara, echoed this, saying “this was done to ruin what is between
us and Russia”.
A
Turkish security official told Reuters that Ankara saw
"very strong signs" the gunman who killed Russia's ambassador there
on Monday was a follower of a US-based Muslim cleric blamed for orchestrating a
failed coup by sections of the military in July.
A
representative of cleric Fethullah Gulen, Alp Aslandogan, denied any link and
said the exiled cleric condemned the murder as a "heinous act".
The
Turkish official, who declined to be identified, said the current investigation
was focused on the gunman's links to the network of Gulen's followers, which
the government calls the "Gulenist Terrorist Organisation" or
"FETO".
There
was swift condemnation of the murder from the West. US State Department
spokesman John Kirby said: “We condemn this act of violence, whatever its
source. Our thoughts and prayers are with him and his family.” In London,
Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said he was “shocked to hear of the despicable
murder of Russia’s ambassador to Turkey. I condemn this cowardly attack".
Mr
Karlov may not have been just a target of opportunity for those trying to lash
out at Moscow over its role in the Syrian conflict. He had been extensively
involved in Syrian affairs, playing a key role in the negotiations between
Turkey and Russia which led to the evacuation of civilians and rebels from
eastern Aleppo after the opposition held part of the city was overrun by the
forces of Bashar al-Assad. The ambassador had also, it was said, played a part
in convincing the Iranians, supporters of the regime with militia fighters
present on the ground in Aleppo, to accept the deal.
He also
served as ambassador to both North and South Korea for a prolonged period
before arriving in Ankara and was widely respected in the international
diplomatic circuit.
Russia
and Turkey had been locked in a confrontation after the shooting down of a
Russian warplane by the Turks last year. But relations thawed after an apology
from President Erdogan, and the two countries have been cooperating on Syria,
something Mr Karlov had also helped engineer.