Turkish police detain six after Russian ambassador shot dead

Karlov’s remains were sent back to Moscow from Turkey after a ceremony at the airport in Ankara

The flag-wrapped coffin of ambassador Andrei Karlov is carried to a plane during a ceremony at Esenboga airport in Ankara (Reuters)

Turkish police have detained six people over the killing of Russia’s ambassador Andrey Karlov, security sources have said, widening an investigation to relatives of the policeman who gunned the envoy down.

Both countries cast Monday’s attack at an art gallery in the capital Ankara as an attempt to undermine a recent thawing of ties that have been strained by civil war in Syria, where they back opposing sides.

The war, which has killed more than 300,000 people and created a power vacuum exploited by Isis, reached a potential turning point last week when Syrian forces ended rebel resistance in the northern city of Aleppo. Russia, an ally of President Bashar al-Assad, supported that advance with air strikes.

Mr Karlov’s remains were sent back to Moscow from Turkey after a ceremony at the airport in Ankara. The white, red and blue Russian flag was draped on the casket as a Russian Orthodox priest recited prayers.

Turkey identified the killer as 22-year-old Mevlut Mert Altintas, who had worked for the Ankara riot police. Altintas, who also shouted slogans associated with Islamist militancy after shooting the ambassador, was killed minutes later by members of Turkey’s special forces.

His mother, father, sister and two other relatives were held in the western province of Aydin, while his flatmate in Ankara was also detained, security sources said.

The gunman was unlikely to have acted alone, a senior Turkish government official said on Tuesday, as investigators from both countries hunted for clues as to who might have been behind the killing.

The senior government official described the assassination as “fully professional, not a one-man action” and said the attack was well-planned. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to The Associated Press because he was not authorised to release details to the press.

Turkish authorities have not publicly released any information on the investigation or on a possible motive for the policeman.

Turkey’s foreign minister has told US Secretary of State John Kerry that Ankara and Moscow believe followers of Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen were behind the killing, ministry sources said on Tuesday. Ankara also blames Mr Gulen for a failed July coup, although Mr Gulen has denied responsibility for the coup and Monday’s attack and has condemned both events.

The slogans that Altintas shouted, which were captured on video and circulated widely on social media, suggested he was aligned to a radical Islamist ideology, rather than that of Mr Gulen, who preaches a message of interfaith dialogue.

“Don’t forget Aleppo, don’t forget Syria. You will not be able to feel safe for as long as our districts are not safe. Only death can take me from here,” he shouted in Turkish.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Monday he and Russia’s Vladimir Putin had agreed in a telephone call to strengthen cooperation in fighting terrorism.

Mr Putin said it was aimed at derailing Russia’s attempts to find, along with Iran and Turkey, a solution for the Syria crisis. The foreign ministers of three countries, meeting in Moscow on Tuesday, said they were ready to broker a Syrian peace deal.

Turkey faces multiple security threats, including from Isis. Earlier this month a spokesman for the hardline Sunni Muslim group urged global sympathisers to carry out new attacks, singling out Turkish diplomatic, military and financial interests as preferred targets.

Altintas also shouted: “We are the ones who swore allegiance to Mohammed for the jihad!”, which the mass circulation Hurriyet newspaper said was a slogan commonly used in propaganda videos of the group formerly allied to al-Qaeda in Syria.

Media present at the event Mr Karlov was attending, an exhibition of photographs from Russia, captured the killing in graphic detail.

As special forces stormed the building, Altintas initially waited by the ambassador’s body and would not allow him to be treated, Hurriyet reported.

An initial police report said that 11 shots were fired at the ambassador and nine were on target, the senior security official said. In a video message to the nation on Monday evening, Mr Erdogan said Altintas had graduated from a police academy before joining the riot police.

Russian investigators arrived in Ankara on Tuesday, officials from the Kremlin and the Turkish presidency said.

Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said the street where the Russian embassy is located would be named after the ambassador.

The gallery where the shooting occurred is opposite the US embassy. A gun was fired in front of the embassy overnight and the United States closed its three missions in Turkey on Tuesday.

Reuters