ANKARA, Turkey \u2014 Shouting \u201cDon\u2019t forget Aleppo! Don\u2019t forget Syria!\u201d a Turkish policeman in a suit and tie fatally shot Russia\u2019s ambassador to Turkey in front of stunned onlookers at a photo exhibit. Police killed the assailant after a shootout.<\/p>\n
Ambassador Andrei Karlov, 62, was several minutes into a speech at the embassy-sponsored exhibition in the Turkish capital of Ankara when a man fired at least eight shots, according to an AP photographer in the audience.<\/p>\n
\u201cDon\u2019t forget Aleppo, don\u2019t forget Syria!\u201d the gunman shouted in Turkish, referring to the Syrian city where Russian bombardments have helped drive rebels from areas they had occupied for years during the war.<\/p>\n
He also shouted \u201cAllahu akbar,\u201d the Arabic phrase for \u201cGod is great\u201d and continued in Arabic: \u201cWe are the descendants of those who supported the Prophet Muhammad, for jihad.\u201d<\/p>\n
Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu identified the gunman as Mevlut Mert Altintas. He said Altintas, who was born in 1994, had been an officer with Ankara\u2019s riot police squad for more than two years. Soylu did not give a motive for the attack.<\/p>\n
The gunman approached Karlov as he lay on the ground and shot him at least one more time at close range, the AP photographer said. The attacker also smashed several of the framed photos hung for the exhibition, as panicked people ran for cover. Three other people were wounded in the attack, Turkey\u2019s NTV television said.<\/p>\n
After shooting the ambassador, the gunman climbed to the second floor of the same building and was killed after a 15-minute shootout with police, Turkey\u2019s Anadolu news agency reported.<\/p>\n
The attack comes a day before a meeting of Russian, Turkish and Iranian foreign and defense ministers in Moscow to discuss Syria. Russia and Iran have backed Syrian President Bashar Assad throughout the nearly six-year conflict, while Turkey has supported Assad\u2019s foes.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a tragic day in the history of our country and Russian diplomacy,\u201d Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said in televised comments.<\/p>\n
\u201cAmbassador Karlov has made a lot of personal contributions to the development of ties with Turkey. He has done a lot to overcome a crisis in bilateral relations,\u201d she said. \u201cHe was a man who put his heart and his soul into his job. It\u2019s a terrible loss for us and also the world.\u201d<\/p>\n
Karlov joined the diplomatic service in 1976. He served as Russia\u2019s ambassador to Pyongyang in 2001-06, and later worked as the chief of the Foreign Ministry\u2019s consular department. He had served as the ambassador to Turkey since 2013.<\/p>\n
U.S. State Department spokesman John Kirby said U.S. officials were aware of reports about the shooting.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe condemn this act of violence, whatever its source,\u201d Kirby said.<\/p>\n
The United Nations also condemned the attack.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere can be no justification for an attack on an ambassador … and we very much hope that the perpetrators will be brought to justice,\u201d U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said.<\/p>\n
Melih Gokcek, the mayor for Ankara, told reporters outside the exhibition center that the \u201cheinous\u201d attack aimed to disrupt newly-re-established relations between Turkey and Russia.<\/p>\n
Relations between Russia and Turkey were badly strained by the downing of a Russian warplane at the Syrian border in November 2015, but Turkey\u2019s apology earlier this year helped overcome the rift. The leaders of the two countries, Presidents Vladimir Putin and Recep Tayyip Erdogan, have held several meetings in recent months and spoken frequently over the phone.<\/p>\n
Russia and Turkey have co-sponsored the evacuation of civilians and rebels from Aleppo and also discussed the prospect of organizing a new round of peace talks in Kazakhstan\u2019s capital, Astana.<\/p>\n
Turkey has struggled with multiple security threats in recent years, including Kurdish militants who claimed responsibility for a Dec. 10 bombing in Istanbul that killed 44 people, many of them police. The Islamic State group fighting in Syria and Iraq has also been blamed for attacks in Turkey, a NATO member and a partner in the U.S.-led campaign against the group.<\/p>\n
Additionally, Turkish security forces and courts remain preoccupied with purging state institutions of the supporters of an exiled Islamist cleric whom the government accuses of staging a failed coup attempt in July.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
ANKARA, Turkey \u2014 Shouting \u201cDon\u2019t forget Aleppo! Don\u2019t forget Syria!\u201d a Turkish policeman in a suit and tie fatally shot Russia\u2019s ambassador to Turkey in front of stunned onlookers at a photo exhibit. Police killed the assailant after a shootout. Ambassador Andrei Karlov, 62, was several minutes into a speech at the embassy-sponsored exhibition in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[65],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-3060","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-nation-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3060","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3060"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3060\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3060"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3060"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3060"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=3060"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}