Russian Ambassador to Turkey Is Assassinated in Ankara
Photo
A man, right, reported by The
Associated Press to be the gunman, after the shooting of the Russian
ambassador, on the floor, on Monday at a gallery in Ankara, the capital
of Turkey.Credit
Yavuz Alatan/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
ISTANBUL — Russia’s ambassador to Turkey
was assassinated at an Ankara art exhibit on Monday evening by a lone
Turkish gunman shouting “God is great!” and “don’t forget Aleppo, don’t
forget Syria!” in what Russia called a terrorist attack.
The gunman, described by Ankara’s mayor as a policeman, also wounded at least three others in the assault on the envoy, Andrey G. Karlov, which was captured on Turkish video. Turkish officials said the assailant was killed by other officers in a shootout.
The
assassination, an embarrassing security failure in the Turkish capital,
instantly vaulted relations between Turkey and Russia to a new level of
crisis over the Syrian conflict on Turkey’s southern doorstep, now in
its sixth year.
The
longer-term implications for the Russia-Turkey relationship, which had
been warming recently after plunging a year ago, were not immediately
clear. But some analysts played down the notion that the assassination
would lead to a new rupture, saying it could conversely bring the
countries closer together in a shared fight against terrorism.
President
Vladimir V. Putin of Russia said on Russian television that Mr. Karlov
had been “despicably killed” in a provocation meant to disrupt ties with
Turkey.
Photo
Andrey G. Karlov, the Russian
ambassador to Turkey, speaking at the gallery in Ankara on Monday,
moments before he was shot. A man believed to be the gunman is behind
him at left.Credit
Burhan Ozbilici/Associated Press
In
an emergency meeting with Foreign Minister Sergey V. Lavrov and other
top officials, Mr. Putin said, “There can be only one answer to this:
stepping up the fight against terrorism, and the bandits will feel
this.”
The
assassination came after days of protests by Turks angry over Russia’s
support for Syria’s government in the conflict and the Russian role in
the killings and destruction in Aleppo, the northern Syrian city.
The
Russian envoy was shot from behind and immediately fell to the floor
while speaking at an exhibition of photographs, according to multiple
accounts from the scene, the Contemporary Arts Center in the Cankaya
area of Ankara.
The
gunman, wearing a dark suit and tie, was seen in video footage of the
assault waving a pistol and shouting in Arabic: “God is great! Those who
pledged allegiance to Muhammad for jihad. God is great!”
Then
he switched to Turkish and shouted: “Don’t forget Aleppo, don’t forget
Syria! Step back! Step back! Only death can take me from here.”
Turkish
officials said the gunman was killed after a shootout with Turkish
Special Forces. His identity was not immediately known.
People huddled during the shooting in the art gallery.Credit
Burhan Ozbilici/Associated Press
Russia’s
Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, Maria Zakharova, told the Rossiya 24 news
channel that Mr. Karlov had died of his wounds in what she described as
a terrorist attack. Turkey’s Interior Ministry said the ambassador had
died at Guven Hospital in Ankara.
Russian
news agencies said the ambassador’s wife fainted and was hospitalized
after learning of her husband’s death. They also said Russian tourists
in Turkey had been advised against leaving their hotel rooms or visiting
public places as a precaution.
Russia’s
Tass news agency said Mr. Karlov had been shot from behind while
finishing remarks at the opening of an art exhibition titled “Russia
Through Turks’ Eyes.”
Mr.
Karlov, who started his career as a diplomat in 1976, worked
extensively in North Korea over two decades, before moving to the region
in 2007, according to a biography on the Russian Embassy’s website. He became ambassador in July 2013.
The
attack was a rare instance of an assassination of a Russian envoy.
Historians said it might have been the first since Pyotr Voykov, a
Soviet ambassador to Poland, was shot to death in Warsaw in 1927.
For
many Russians, the assassination is likely to recall the 19th-century
killing in Tehran of Aleksandr Griboyedov, a poet and diplomat who died
after a mob stormed the Russian Embassy. That episode is remembered as
the most severe insult to Russia’s diplomatic corps in the country’s
history.
Photo
The gunman after shooting the Russian ambassador.Credit
Burhan Ozbilici/Associated Press
More
recently, the Lebanese Shiite militia Hezbollah, now allied with Russia
in Syria, kidnapped four Soviet diplomats in 1985, killing one and
releasing three a month later.
The
United States, which has tangled bitterly with Russia over the Syrian
conflict, quickly condemned the assassination in Ankara. In a statement,
Secretary of State John Kerry called it a “despicable attack, which was
also an assault on the right of all diplomats to safely and securely
advance and represent their nations around the world.”
Other
prominent officials who often criticize Russia’s actions in Syria and
elsewhere also offered their condolences. “No justification for such a
heinous act,” Jens Stoltenberg, the secretary general of NATO, wrote on Twitter. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon of the United Nations said in a statement that he was “appalled by this senseless act of terror.”
The
assassination also illustrated the long reach of the Syrian war. It has
destabilized Europe with hundreds of thousands of refugees, spawned
terrorist attacks in Paris and Brussels, and led to the rise of the Islamic State, which controls territory across Iraq and Syria.
When
the war began, Turkey was rising and confident, and Recep Tayyip
Erdogan, then its prime minister, began supporting rebels seeking the
ouster of the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad. Entirely preoccupied
with bringing Mr. Assad down, Turkey opened its borders to weapons and
fighters flowing to the rebels, turning a blind eye, for a time, when
the opposition turned increasingly Islamist.
As
the war ground on, the consequences for Turkey were profound. It was
overwhelmed with refugees — more than three million now reside in the
country — and the rise of the Islamic State led to terrorist attacks
within Turkey’s borders.
The Turkish police secured the area outside the art gallery after the attack.Credit
Erhan Ortac/Getty Images
In
the fall of 2015, with Mr. Assad confronting multiple challenges at
home, Russia entered the conflict in support of the Syrian government,
reinforcing Mr. Assad at a weak moment and dealing a blow to Turkey’s
ambitions in Syria. Relations between Turkey and Russia reached a low
point in November 2015 after Turkey shot down a Russian jet near the
Syrian border.
But
this year, in an effort to restore relations, Mr. Erdogan, now the
president, met with Mr. Putin in St. Petersburg, and ever since the two
countries have largely put aside their differences on Syria and focused
on improving economic ties. In August, when Turkey’s military went into
Syria to push the Islamic State out of the border town of Jarabulus, the
move was widely seen as having been made with the tacit approval of
Russia.
For
Turkey the episode resonated in the Turkish collective memory: Turkey
lost many diplomats in the 20th century to Armenian militants in a
campaign of assassination in revenge for the Armenian genocide during
World War I.
“Turkey
is very aware of the size of this failure, and I think the government
will make every effort to investigate this fully,” Sinan Ulgen, a former
Turkish diplomat who is the chairman of the Center for Economics and
Foreign Policy Studies, an Istanbul research organization, said of the
Russian diplomat’s assassination. “I don’t expect any crisis between
Turkey and Russia.”
Since
the Turkish military incursion into Syria in August, Mr. Erdogan’s
criticism of Russia over Syria had been muted. But Mr. Erdogan faced a
dilemma: Even as he was warming to Russia, he faced a Turkish public,
not to mention the Syrian refugees within Turkey, angry over Russia’s
role in the bombing of Aleppo.
On
Monday evening in Istanbul, just after the assassination, a group of
protesters gathered outside the Russian consulate on Istiklal Avenue,
the city’s largest pedestrian street. The gathering was more street
theater than protest, with two men lying on the street, shrouded in
bloody sheets and the Syrian flag, and surrounded by candles, to
represent the killings in Aleppo.
Mohammed
al-Shibli, a Syrian activist who participated, said, “I felt extreme
happiness when I heard the news” of the assassination.
He
continued: “This is the first step in getting justice for the Syrian
people. The ambassador is not innocent. He represents the foreign policy
of his murderous state and thus he is a murderer, as well. Now we are
waiting for revenge against everyone who shed blood in Syria.”
Correction: December 19, 2016
An earlier version of this article misidentified the
government that has collaborated with Russia even though it backs a
different side in the Syrian conflict. It is Turkey, not Syria.
copy http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/19/world/europe/
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